


Breach

by will_o_wisp



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Father/Son Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-04-13 20:00:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4535391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/will_o_wisp/pseuds/will_o_wisp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A man comes to the town of Breach with a score to settle</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a fusion with the world of Stephen King's 'The Dark Tower' series. Basically, I love The Gunslinger and when I try to write western things I inevitably draw inspiration from it, so I decided to just go with the 'Verse.
> 
> If there's anything said that doesn't make sense, please ask me and I'll translate what I can. There's also a really helpful Dark Tower wiki, if you don't mind spoilers.
> 
> No idea how long this will be yet, but I hope you all like it :)

I.

There was fire in the air, embers burning hot and high like the fires of Reap under a moon you dared not look into.

A Gunslinger, for that was all he could be, stood under the embers floating through the air, his guns leveled at a man before him. A man hard looked for, and yet not the man he wanted and needed. He looked like a demon of ash and flame, and smouldering hatred.

It made Jed Walker quake in his boots, kneeling as he was on hot hardpan as his place burned.

“You was just a boy,” he said, his tone broken. “You was just a boy.”

Like that would help, he knew.

“I was. And now I’m looking for mine.”

“Dead,” Jed rasped. How else could the boy have lived? He’d been dumped in the desert with the corpse of his ma. Jed had done the act himself.

The shot rang like thunder, like a thunderclap in a rare storm. Hardpan burst next to Jed’s knee in a shower of painful flecks and rocks like meteors into his skin. He cowered, covering his eyes past a danger already past, and quivered again.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry Gunslinger-sai!” he screeched, face to the dirt, tasting like dust and salt, and he looked up with a dirty tear streaked face, ignoring the way his crotch went wet and warm. “The world’s moved on! I moved with it, I don’t work for Chau no-more, and I was only followin’ orders, do ye ken?”

“I ken orders,” said the man, not bothering to dispute the remark of Gunslinger, and the man stepped forward. He was really holding them. Guns. Iron. Real guns, like the gods wore in Gilead. The Good Man Farson was massing a rebellion, and one of the Gunslingers was here, with him, as he had been the first time against Chau.

Chin trembling, Jed hoped that meant salvation.

“You burned my home, you burned everything. You’ve got me here, a snivelling worm. Please, Gunslinger, I’ve forgotten the face of my father. But I’ve tried, I’ve tried so hard to remem-”

The next shot he didn’t really hear, even though it was the second clap. The bullet pierced through his skull and he made a peculiar,  “ _ YIP!”   _ as his body flailed back into the dirt.

The hardpan, unused to water, sucked greedily at his blood, as the Gunslinger reloaded two bullets and holstered the gun on his right hip.

The Gunslinger then stood, brushing ash from his duster, turned to look at the burning place. He’d already interrogated the other that lived here, another of Chau’s, and had gotten a name.

Breach. The town of Breach. Summat was going down there, and it was where the Gunslinger had to be.

“Gunslinger no more,” he said. Just a man, now, with thoughts of revenge and iron on his hips, thunder in his hands.

“ Thankee,” he said, picking up a few burning sticks with gloved hands and savouring the sharp stinging heat regardless, “ _ coward-sai.” _

He tossed the sticks on the body, watched a moment as they began to char and stink, before the Gunslinger turned and went to find his horse.

Breach. 50 wheels to the north.  _ Do ye ken wheels?  _ asked the stupid man, before the Gunslinger had shot the partner, remember him him well.

They’d both forgotten the face of their fathers, and the Gunslinger wondered if he’d forgotten his.

II.

“We’re closed,” said Chuck Smith as he cleaned the carbon from the oil lamps, drenching his hands in grey soapy water.

It was Sunday, preachers day, and most of the town of Breach was out praying off their many sins. In Breach, no man was a saint. Chuck even had suspicions of the Sheriff and his sister, Lady Pentecost, and Chuck considered the two of them quite possibly the holiest out of the folk in Breach. But every Sunday most or all the town crowded into that box of a church to scream of the Man Jesus.

He’d heard the batwings creak, and he was in no mood for anyone just then. Not even his help, Jazmine Becket, was around on a Sunday. Nor the gilly’s or the drunks. Not even the weed-chewer, Earl.

He had no idea why the idea of a preaching day soured him so.

“My coin is good,” was the gruff reply, their voice something deep and sweet and touched by whiskey.

Chuck didn’t so much as glance back, despite the brief tightening of his stomach. The voice alone on the man could spread legs. “I don’t give a shit of your coin. We’re closed. Go to church.” He rinsed his hands in the bin and wiped them, ready to chase them off.

Turning, though, he found a man in a brown duster, jeans and a sun-bleached, open throated shirt that had seen either too many washings or too few. He had a red beard, pale skin and blue eyes like the dry, empty sky in early morning. Not to mention the guns, honest to god  _ guns  _ slung at each hip, like the man was some kind of Gunslinger. He had loose belts of ammunition too.

The man was dangerous. He was like a God stepped from In-World. Like an answer to the demons in the walls of forgotten places.

The tightening got profoundly worse. Despite working at Madame Kaidanovsky’s for so long, he never washed the need away. Chuck was almost always ready to get on his back and find love.

“Ain’t got much of a use for church. Full of liars and thieves,” said the man, taking his hat off now. Like his beard suggested, it was a shocking shade of ginger.

“So you’d rather be around honest ones?” He didn’t seem like one of Chau’s men, but only they’d be so persistent. Chuck hoped he wasn’t. They rarely came on Sunday’s looking for favours, and Chuck was in no mood to be manhandled, even by one as handsome as this.

“Honest liars, honest thieves. They don’t hide their game much. Are you honest?”

“As I can be. You might as well sit.” He studied the man. “Are you from round here? Are you Chau’s?”

“I’m not,” he said, his tone clipped like it was an insult to suggest it. Chuck supposed it would be.

The man sat at the bar and Chuck, despite his policy for Sunday’s, found himself walking behind it and wondering what the man would order.

“I’ll have whiskey. Star. And burger if you’ve got it.”

Chuck ground his teeth some, but the cooker was hot. He’d been planning on his own food soon enough anyway.

He glanced at Herc as he pulled his best bottle after a moment of considering pawning off something subpar. But the man seemed smart enough to know, and Chuck really didn’t have much against him, other than the ache spreading through his midriff and his general bitterness of the Lord’s Day.

“I’ll need your coin, for the meat.”

The rider – a bandana around his neck, the vague scent of horse all suggested it - took his gunna from around his shoulders and put it down on the table. From it he drew his poke and shook a few coins out. Chuck inspected them, his stoic face not showing how surprised he was of the warped silver before he nodded.

He wondered again if this man was from In-World.

“Keep it all, I’ll be wanting the bottle.”

Chuck thought about saying no, but pushed the Star to the rider before turning to head to the icebox.

“It’ll be more, then.”

“I’ve ways to pay,” he said.

“Ways?” said Chuck vaguely, as he took meat from the freezer and formed the patty with slaps of his hands, and tossed it into the hot cast iron pan. In fact, he felt charitable enough when he’d washed his hands to put eggs on, and toast.

“Ways,” said the rider.

Chuck didn’t ask again, as he finished cooking, staring at the bubbling fat and browning meat with a sort of introspection. Considering the man at the bar.

He served it up on cracked plates. One for him as well, he’d been planning on eating anyway. Pushed salt and pepper on the bar but the toast was butterless. They soaked it in yolk and juice and the rider rumbled his appreciation of the extra food, and Chuck simply shrugged like it was nothing.

He wished he knew why he gave a damn, to be honest, but it was probably the guns. Probably that he was breaking bread with a Gunslinger, and Chuck did not hold with Farson or the Rebellion brewing in the belly of In-World.

“You drink too,” said the man after their simple meal was nothing more than crumbs on a plate, pushing the bottle of whiskey over the rough, permanently gummy surface of the bar from too many spilled beers.

Looking up, Chuck felt his stomach tighten to see those eyes so focused on him. The were intense eyes. Eyes that seemed like they could love and hate in equal measure. “I’d have to lock it, then.”

“Lock it after. Pour yourself a drink.”

He did, like a boy under a spell. Maybe he was. 

_ But when had a Gunslinger ever fucked a former boy-whore, _ _ sai?  _ Thought Chuck viciously, as he took the bottle.

He poured himself a glass of whiskey, tipping it back with practiced ease. He barely noticed the burn anymore, and he thought about finishing the bottle with him. Maybe tossing the Gunslinger a suck for a bit of comfort.

“How much for a night?” asked the man.

“It’s the Lord’s Day. I’m charitable. You’ve paid enough. Though you could do me a name.”

The man smiled. It was so gentle and unusual on his face. “Hercules.”

“Like the story?”

“The same,” said the man, rising, putting on his hat. “But call me Herc. What room?” He had his plate next to his empty cup, and Chuck found himself a little sad that he wasn’t staying longer. Or asking to stay in his.

Chuck tossed him a key. “Two.”

“And your room?”

With a deliberate movement, Chuck cleared the plates and put away the whiskey before he opened his mouth again. The heat was trembling deep within him now, demanding to be tended to.

“Third floor.”

When he heard boots on the ground, Chuck looked up, expecting a come-on. He had half formed fantasies of being taken there on the counter by the man floating through his head. Especially warm and liked, living in such drenched sin on the Lord’s Day, even if he’d be burned in a Reap fire for it later.

But Herc was standing by the doors. His blue eyes were still needy, though, and it made Chuck anxious and made that heat threatening in his bones all the worse. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d needed someone like this. Certainly no Gunslinger.

“Anywhere I can tether my horse?”

“I’ve a small stable out back, next to my coop,” said Chuck. “It’s extra, to keep your horse. I have hay, water. But I don’t brush or clean, you are to do that yourself. Or you can go to Jake Aguero’s up the road, but he’s a lowlife. He’ll rub your horse down for a price set to steal from you.” Chuck paused a moment, thinking of him. “He’ll also be praying away his sins today, no guarantee he’s not bathing in the cleansing fire up the road right now.”

“Fair enough,” said Herc, leaving through the bat wings and into the night.

It was with trembling hands that Chuck started finishing his cleaning. He replaced the glass chimneys of the oil lamps, he wiped the tables one last time onto the floor, he swept.The place was clean enough for opening tomorrow, and Chuck took care of the dishes from the meal.

Outside, a procession of people was wandering by, probably amped up on the absolvement of sins, and Chuck watched them once or twice, ignoring their glares that they were working.

No matter. Chuck knew none would say shit because the Pentecost’s didn’t go. And Chuck would show them his bah and give them a bolt to the ass for their troubles, should they come to him directly with a quarrel over breaking sabbath.

Herc came back a few minutes later, this time through the back. Chuck put out the light and waved old hopeful Earl off before he locked up, closing the main doors, fighting the old rusted lock.

One hand reached out, turning the bolt and setting it true for Chuck, and Chuck shivered in that warmth despite the heat in the little wooden furnace where he worked.

The Gunslinger’s hands were hot on the back of Chuck’s neck, pulling him in. He smelled like dust and the open road, hard riding. He tasted like the whiskey they’d been drinking, burning and hot. Chuck liked the metaphor of fire. The man was fire.

Herc’s lips were rough and yet pleasant on his, hands making quick work of Chuck’s buttons, pushing his vest off, dragging him further down the hall. To the stairs and up, up. Room two would go vacant.

Chuck opened his door, let Herc into the tiny scrap of an apartment Chuck had to call his home, to set his gunna. It wasn’t much.

He let Herc take him on the bed. Let him have his mouth, his entrance, his entire body for the using. And Herc was not inconsiderate, for a cowboy, a possible  _ Gunslinger _ , looking for a fuck and finding only a male bartender, and no female gilly about the place.

They fell asleep a tangle of limbs in the hard double bed together, Chuck against Herc’s sweaty chest, head over his heart, as he was lulled to sleep by the slowly lowering thuds.

III.

There was a clatter later that night that had Chuck bolting up in bed. His heart was hammering, listening to the yells outside. The sheriff, Pentecost. Others. It wasn’t uncommon, but he’d been having such a dream…

He looked to his left and right, finding he was alone. He wondered if maybe the closeness had been too much, as he wiped sleep from his eyes and tried to ignore his disappointment. How long had it been, since Herc had left? How long had Chuck been alone?

He had no idea the time, just that it was dark.

There were lights outside, lanterns, men yelling. It happened often enough that it shouldn’t have scared him as much as it did, but this time he went to the window and lifted the shutter to look. Watching the procession through warped glass, not hearing enough to know the cause, just that they weren’t coming to his place. Fine enough.

He shut the blinds and went to his bed, mind travelling back to his dreams. Warm things, sensual things. Being held down and fucked by Herc, who had all the experience his eyes suggested.

His hand had wandered down when he heard the door open.

Sitting up again, he was surprised to see Herc there, dressed in only his trousers. His skin was a pale gleam in the light of the moon through the thin curtains. It made Chuck’s heart pound a little more.

“I thought you’d left.”

Herc shook his head. “Oh, just can’t stand chamber pots.”

Made sense. He nodded, feeling dumb. Knowing it was a lie, but the man lowered himself to the bed and Chuck’s hands worked at his tight belt buckle as they kissed. He smelled like sweat, like gunpowder, and Chuck knew without asking he was the one they were looking for.

The honest thing, the right, thing, was to say no. Or to love him and then sneak away while he was in sleep. But Chuck was going to do neither, and he had no idea why.

Something about him made him trust him. Man Jesus, he wished he knew why.

He gave Herc his mouth again, and sucked him while the man’s fingers traced so gently through his hair, without shoving or making him gag. The thought made Chuck cry just a little in the dark, that a man was being gentle with him. Any man.  _ This  _ man.

He swallowed, cleaned him, and lay with him as Herc pulled him to a shuddering climax.

They lay together again, and Chuck hoped he wouldn’t leave this time.

“Are you a Gunslinger?” he asked in the darkness, not expecting an answer.

“I was,” said Herc, his hand coming up to tease at Chuck’s hair.

“ How do you stop?” His heart was thudding fast, excited to think that the only other man he’d ever met that had guns had at least  _ been _ a gunslinger. Had seen and walked Gilead, who lived by that old and ancient code.

Herc didn’t reply, though, merely rolled over and way, leaving Chuck knowing he’d said something wrong. But he wasn’t thrown off, when he put his arm around him, and the two of them lay like that until their breathing synced. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was asked to provide a quick translation of a few words!
> 
> Sai - Like a word for person, a gender neutral term like miss or mister. Thankee-sai  
> In-World - Where the capital of what's left of the world is, Gilead, and where most of the wealthy and healthy live  
> Mid-World - Far out, past most laws. Some claim loyalty to Gilead, which would be considered a royal state. Most are on their own  
> Gunna - Worldly possessions  
> Bah - Crossbow

I.

The late night blow didn’t completely erase the ugly task Herc had done. The sneaking, the lying. And for a man who was a liar as well as disgraced, having an honest waif like this Chuck curling against his back regardless of what Herc might have done didn’t seem right.

He kept thinking about the task he was really there for. Not for finding love between some man's legs, no matter how rough and sweet the boy was. He wasn’t there for that, though he could see Chuck having the potential to be loved in his own way.

The boy also had fire. There was that, and it was that that made Herc roll over to fuck him again.

Chuck woke up with barely a nudge, and accepted the kisses. He didn’t ask questions, just seemed insatiable as he grew hard against Herc’s thigh.

Herc bit him on the lip, and Chuck gasped, his fingers curling painfully into Herc’s shoulders, sensing the mood. 

It was too good, pushing inside of him. Chuck was already loose, and only a dollop more of oil was what it took as he stopped at the hilt, feeling Chuck constrict around him. Feeling both their pulses like odd extensions of each other.

The boy’s mouth was open, and Herc admired his body again. Soft, maybe, but he had iron. Whomever his father was, they’d had good genes. He had steel and fire in his veins, soft because it wasn’t tempered yet. It needed working, coaxing.

He leaned down, taking advantage of that open mouth as he began to thrust again and again, really making the boy’s voice raise into his mouth.

“I can take it, whatever it is,” said Chuck. Herc squeezed hard for that, thrust hard. “Agh, you old bastard, I can - I can -”

Whatever it was, it was lost, as Herc reached down and stroked him hard and fast, and made the boy shudder again, twitching, looking like he was at the edge of crying.

“You can’t,” he said, meaning everything but the fucking, and Chuck’s hand came up in a thump against his shoulder, a meaningless blow.

“ Fuck you I can’t -  _ hhnn!”  _ Chuck’s body heaved, and Herc held on, spilling inside of him a few moments later. Pleased Chuck was full enough of his cum now, that if he were a maid he’d undoubtedly have a bastard in his stomach.

He pulled out, and Chuck was practically whining at being empty. He went to the basin, took some water to clean the slick away.

“Jesus. Was that three?”

“Think so,” said Herc, wondering if it was. Something about the boy helped him get it up a lot easier. He was more than a jilly. 

Falling back into the bed, Herc hoped he’d sleep. Dreamless. He knew if he did have dreams it wouldn’t be because of what he’d done that night, sneaking away to what this place called ‘The Edge’ to see a man and find some answers.

He knew it wouldn’t be because he’d put a bullet in a man’s brain. That was just business. Nothing horrifying about simple business. 

_ I’ll have you soon enough Chau. _

The boy kissed him and put his head on Herc’s chest. He felt warm, and Herc would normally move away because of the heat coming in through the window but he allowed it. Something about the boy seemed to beg for the attention. A need for more than just a good fucking.

II.

The next morning, Chuck woke up in Herc’s arms. He felt warm and safe, and wanted to stay there. He might have, if it wasn’t for the insistent crowing of the rooster and the yappy guard dog next door, Hooch. 

With a glance at Herc, who seemed to be asleep but probably wasn’t, Chuck slipped from the bed, rolling out of his arms.

Smiling, when a hand reached forward and gently pinched the flesh of his bottom. He glanced back to see Herc with his eyes open staring up at him, and for a moment Chuck felt himself stirring and almost climbed into bed to suck Herc to life.

“That damned rooster,” said Herc.

Chuck blushed some. “He’s a menace,” he said, turning away, going to his bureau and taking what he needed. Deciding to go unshaved, even if it meant scrutiny from the townsfolk, but he made sure to brush his hair neatly.

“There a place a man can bathe?” 

He looked through the mirror to where Herc was still laying in bed, on his side now, staring at Chuck as he washed and dressed.

“There’s a hot spring I can take you to by night, perhaps, if your horse will bear two. It’s a short ride, and some of the folks pitched in to clean it some. Night is best, though. No one goes after dark. They figure there are demons nearby it.” The place was ghostly, like a relic of a forgotten happiness.

“Mm.” Herc closed his eyes, leaning back in his not-sleep, and Chuck finished dressing.

In a clean work shirt untucked from his pants, Chuck went around to check his locks. Everything was well in order, but that meant little, when someone could easily steal his keys while Chuck slept in a fucked out haze.

Heading outside, Chuck checked his chickens. Had the usual relief that nothing had been in the coop, and he let them out before scouring the place for any evidence that Herc might have left.

There were no prints in the hard ground, not that he expected them much, and he wondered if Herc had come through there the night before, if the horse had moved. If he’d stripped to prove a lie, or if he’d only been imagining the scent of gunpowder on him.

Checking the horse gained him nothing. It was a beautiful amber creature, and it nickered at him, watching him with big brown eyes. Chuck gave it a few oats, which seemed to please it well enough.

He walked the small court yard in wondering as he scattered corn and grain for the pecking hens, and gathered the eggs from the roost for breakfast.

He paused in the kitchen when he heard the knock at the main doors, and he set his eggs aside and wiped his hands as he headed through the dim bar to open the door for whomever was there. 

He tucked his shirt in along the way, rolled up his cuffs and sighed a moment, before opening the set of doors to reveal the batwings. He was unsurprised to see Sheriff Pentecost, who looked like he hadn’t slept in too long maybe. Behind him was a slight woman named Mako Mori. Chuck’s sister, in a lot of ways.

“Morning Sheriff,” he said mildly. “Mako.” 

“Morning Charles.”

“Chuck,” said Mako.

The other side of the coin was that Stacker was like an absent sort of father for Chuck. Always checking in on the lone orphan whore, making sure Chuck was fed. It wasn’t quite the same way he treated Mako, though. Mako really was his daughter, in so many ways.

“I need to know. Do you have any guests?”

“One,” he said. “But he was here all the night if you’re asking.”

Stacker’s brow furrowed. “Oh?”

“Aye.”

“...Oh. You can confirm?”

_ Once a whore, always a whore.  _ Chuck knew that was what the man was thinking. He nodded, and Stacker sighed. “Don’t suppose he’s up?”

“Nope. And it’s bad luck to wake a sleeping man. Come by later, mayhap you’ll catch him before he moves on.” He folded his arms over his chest. “What happened?”

“We think one of Chau’s men killed someone on the Edge. Turns out Greg Fullerton has ties to him. We thought maybe they came to hide out here.”

“Sorry,” said Chuck., who already knew Fullerton had more than just ties. He, like Chuck, was in undeniably deep. “Check Chau’s.” It was a bar and bit of a bad place past the outskirts of town. You only went there if no where else would have you, else you were one of Chau’s.

“We will. I say thankee. Long days.”

“And pleasant nights to ye.”

It was with a chill that Chuck closed the door then. He knew Greg Fullerton. He’d had to make deliveries sometimes, to the man. Endure his rough grabbing, like Chuck was still a whore to be used, whenever he dropped payment.

He locked it again, leaning hard, and jumped when he heard the deep voice behind him.

“I thank you kindly, not giving me up,” said Herc.

Chuck turned to look, trying to be calm, and he smiled.

“Well, you’re not one of Chau’s,” he said. “Saw no reason to say you were.”

“Mm.” 

Herc was bare again, his pants loosely sitting on his narrow waist, belt lost somewhere. He trusted Chuck enough not to take his guns this time, and Chuck swallowed to see him in the light.

Scars he’d felt last night in bed were obvious now, even in the dim filtered sun. The man was rugged, had a hard life. And Chuck didn’t miss the marks of iron around his wrists, like he’d spent too long being dragged about in cuffs. There were also tattoos, rare things Chuck had only seen on a sailor once, when he’d been to the coast for Chau.

Chuck found himself not minding, because like this you could see how red his hair was, wild and untamed from under his hat, and once again those blue eyes…

He was a free man now anyway, right?

“So do you have business out today?” asked Chuck, walking past like he was unaffected, like that god-damned heat wasn’t starting to spread through him again, reminding him how long it’s been since he had someone in his bed - months, probably, before him, and not anyone good before.

“Some riding. Some talking.”

“Can I help with the talking? I can tell you what you need.”

“No.” 

Well.

He went around the bar, took his fresh eggs, and put more wood in the stove, waiting for the coals to take it so he could make them breakfast. The cast iron pan was heavy in his hand, when he set it.

“Can I point you in the right direction?”

“Better you don’t.”

Chuck just sighed and nodded. Sure, he’d found a good man. But a quiet one.

III.

Herc Hansen wasn’t given much to talking sometimes, and this Chuck - christ, didn’t even know his last name yet - seemed too given to it at times. Still, Herc liked him anyway.

He watched the boy go about cooking breakfast and thought about how Chuck was one of those men that wasn’t just for a fuck. He’d probably be one of those you could live with, enjoy your life with. Fucking rough was no unusual thing for a lot of cowboys, but the hatred was always there.

Herc wasn’t so much given to hatred anymore, not for himself or the things he did.

Sitting topless in the locked up bar was peaceful anyway. The place smelled of wood and cooking, the air was still cool with the morning and hadn’t begun to heat up unpleasantly yet. He helped himself to a shot, making sure to put some money down for it, and sat at the bar imagining coffee and whiskey.

Work to be done, though, after breakfast. This morning would be worrisome and there was no doubt he’d be meeting with his old pal Stacker Pentecost at some point into the mix. Herc was a man with a bounty on his head already, never mind what he’d done last night.

But the man had had to die.

He was glad the boy hadn’t figured out yet he’d been lying. Or at least that the boy didn’t care he had.

On the same chipped plates, now washed, Chuck served him four eggs, a few pieces of bread and a bit of hamburger from last night. Even a cup of bitter coffee. Kid probably didn’t have much in the way of an ice box, or at the least didn’t cook for company.

It went down good all the same.

“What’s your name?” he asked, halfway through his food. “Surname, I mean. I know your name.”

Even grunted it last night, when he’d spilled inside the boy. He had such a lovely ass.

“Smith,” said Chuck, finishing his own smaller portion. 

The boy was too soft, Herc noticed now. Not enough hard living in a bar. He was sure that muscles would look lovely on him.

“Is that real or fake?”

“Fake. I was orphaned. Real names Charles Smith, I was raised by Madame Kaidanovsky.”

“So you’re a whore.”

“Ex-whore,” he said, looking up.

There it was. Good heat in those eyes. Maybe one day Herc could get the boy to ride and help him out a bit. Hell, he had Gunslinger’s eyes in his own way. The thought hurt, in too many ways.

“Pardon my words.”

“Pardoned.”

Herc left to get dressed a few minutes later, the taste of his food in his mouth and it was all sitting well in his stomach. Nothing like a good meal to perk you up in the morning, and the boy’s chickens were good.

Chuck followed him up the stairs and his fine hands found Herc’s waist, pushing, seeking his manhood. They squeezed, and Herc made a noncommittal sound.

“I have to ride soon.”

Those hands stilled. “Moving on?”

“Not yet.” He turned, lifted Chuck’s face and gave him a hard kiss, pressing his mouth open. He dipped his tongue inside, feeling Chuck whimper, and he knew the kid would be finding his hand soon enough. Christ, he wasn’t very old. Eighteen, nineteen, and running his own place? “But I’ve got business.”

“Right,” said Chuck, breathless, nodding. 

He half wanted to give the boy a quick one. Fuck his mouth, like the boy wanted, come down his throat.

But he had business. Namely, Stacker Pentecost.

Herc Hansen had once lived around the area, and used to be good friends with the man. A lot had fallen apart since then.

“There’s tonight,” said Herc, gently stepping back. “I’ll be back.”

“Right.” The boy looked disappointed, but a little pleased at the same time.

When he was dressed and cleaned up, Herc let himself out the back. Behind the Lucky Seven Saloon it was peaceful. Not far, a drunk was sleeping slumped by the wooden gate, his snores even and peaceful. Chickens pecked around the yard, and there was a tiny attempt at growing vegetables in one corner.

Herc walked past all this to the small stable, where his horse Eureka nickered at him. 

“Hello handsome,” said Herc, reaching out to stroke Eureka’s muzzle. The horse blew out its nostrils into his palm, tickling him, and he reached up and stroked the gelding between the eyes. “Time to get a move on.”

Everyone in the town of Breach seemed tongue tied, when he asked them questions, or at least unfriendly. Herc hadn’t committed any crimes yet worthy of a Wanted poster, and he made sure to keep inconspicuous as he searched the town for someone with a decent tongue in their heads.

He was about to give up after a young Oriental girl in the general store turned him away when he heard a voice behind him say, “I know you.”

Not liking the sound of that, he turned to see a pretty looking black woman dressed in a walking suit, mass of dark hair piled on top of her head, and a six shooter on her hip.

“Jesus H. Christ. Luna Pentecost, as I live and breathe,” he said, surprised, gigging the horse around to look at her proper.

“Hercules Hansen,” she replied. “Word was you were dead.”

“Word was wrong. Where’s Stacker?”

“Sheriff Stacker?” Herc tried not to make a face at that. “He’s out looking for leads on Greg Fullerton.”

“And who’s that?” he asked, as if he didn’t know. As if he hadn’t put the bullet through his thick skull himself. 

“Man who done got himself shot last night,” she replied. “Hercules, where have you been? Your brother’s been through, even he thought you dead.”

“May as well have been,” he replied.

“Cryptic.” It was all she said, for a long moment. “I still put flowers on her and little Charles’s grave.”

Herc grunted. “I’ll be leaving now. Where did Stacks go?” Stacks. He said that, like it hadn’t been years, like so much hadn’t passed between them that they were dead to each other in too many ways.

“To the Edge. Do ye ken the Edge?”

“No,” he lied. He assumed the Edge was where he met Fullerton after he’d left Chuck alone.

“It’s the halfway point, ‘tween here and Pitfall Canyon. About half an hours good ride, on the road due north from here.”

Herc tipped his hat. “Thankee kindly.”

“Will I be seeing you around, Herc Hansen?” she asked, stepping a little closer, like she wanted to offer her hand in goodbye.

“Ye’ll be seeing me,” he said. “Eureka. Yah!” He snapped the reins a little, turning the horse around. He tipped his hat once more, before galloping through and out of town, past the sheriff’s place, past the gallows, and into the scrublands.

IV.

Chuck opened up his bar at eleven. The drunks came off the street, one of them reeking of something foul. Chuck couldn’t say what it was for certain, but he had a feeling it was one of Chau’s drugs, and he wanted to kick the man out on principle. But he also knew it would get him bad attention.

He knew there was an opium den in town, or just out of it. Chau ran it, like he ran most things. Had his fingers in everything.

It made Chuck angry, thinking about all the blood his own bar was soaked in because of that man and his money. 

“Get off the damn bar,” snapped Chuck, at the one who stank. 

The drunk slid from the bar stool and leered at him. “Star.”

“You know you don’t have the coin. Here,” he poured a cup of the worst stuff he had, pushed it over, and the drunk crowed as he passed back a few cents and tottered into the corner to slump. “What have you been chewing on anyway?”

He merely flashed a mossy smile before he drank his cup in one go with barely a cough.

It was too early for the piano, or for the tremulous sounds of the usual woman, a rather large woman with a timorous voice, to come sing. Instead the bar was full of miners playing poker and solitaire, full of the murmur of voices and cheers from winners. 

Chuck had help for the days and nights. A young woman named Jazmine helped him mind the place. She was one of the Becket’s. Her two brothers who ran the blacksmith, and there was no love lost between Chuck and Raleigh, the younger. The two of them always butt heads, even though Chuck had given Jazmine a job.

She was currently talking to several of the local miners, a smile on her pretty face with golden hair piled atop her head, when the doors opened. 

Chuck turned to see who it was and felt a bit chilled. Talk immediately ceased in the bar, and one by one his customers rose from their tables, taking their money, leaving their drinks, and walking out.

Jazmine gave Chuck a look, and he nodded at her to go to the back. “There’s some stock needs counting,” he said, and she swallowed, heading there.

One of the conditions of her employment was to not ask questions, nor tell her brothers what she saw sometimes.

The two men that entered were Chau’s, one tall with a scarred face, the other shorter and vaguely dog-like, with his pouchy face. Higher ups, ruthless types. Chuck had too many dealings with them, as far as he was concerned.

Like all of Chau’s men, they were dressed in black with fine waist coats. Each was packing bah's, with more knives  probably yet hidden on them, underneath of the loose  _ serape’s  _ they wore.

The last customer was the drunk in the corner who waved, his movements vague. “Got a spare chew?” he asked.

“Get out,” said the pouchy one, but his voice was amiable, like talking to a baby or a favourite dog.

“God bless.” The drunk left, stumbling out the batwings. 

The other walked to the bar and sat down.

“I’ll have rum. Best you’ve got, of course, none of that gut-rot.”

Chuck already knew they wouldn’t be paying for it, as he took a fresh, clean glass and poured a measure of his finest.

“Your good health,” said the man. 

Chuck merely leaned back, watching the other approach, and then he poured him bourbon, because as much as he despised them (or maybe because of it) he remembered what each of them took.

“Such a good whore,” remarked the tall one, setting his glass down.

Feeling himself bristle, Chuck had to fight to keep from baring his teeth. “What do you want, Cooney?”

The pouchy one, his name was David Wilmoth, gave Chuck an amused look, before he seemed to remember himself, growing somber. “You heard about Greg Fullerton?”

“Yes.” Said through his teeth. Impatient.

“He was supposed to make a drop tomorrow. But obviously he can’t. So you’ll be doing it.”

“I will, will I?” Chuck asked, tapping the counter, still irritated over the ‘whore’ comment. It was a mistake, putting his hand there.

Lightning fast, Cooney had his wrist in his hand and yanked him forward. Chuck’s front soaked with what wet from alcohol on the bar, gritting his teeth against the pain as his wrist was twisted around, feeling almost like it might break.

Wilmoth’s cup fell, as Chuck was dragged across the bar, and shattered on the ground, the scent of bourbon hitting the air. 

“Ye will,” hissed Cooney, “or I’ll take your hand, compliments of Hannibal Chau.”

There was a tense moment. Curt was burbling in the back corner, and outside the world turned on as Chuck’s wrist was turned further, dragging a little sound out of him.

“Fine.”

“Good.” Cooney let go. “Like a good whore, always agreeing.”

Cheeks red, Chuck rubbed his wrist, aware it would be bruising soon, swelling. 

Chuck had first fallen in with Chau when he worked for Sasha Kaidanovsky, the woman who owned and ran the local brothel. Small and needing caring for, she was the only one to offer to keep him since most ranches couldn’t be burdened with a four year old. It was hardly charity.

He was raised around the girls, growing a respect for the working woman. When he was old enough, he cleaned and kept the place as best as he could, and when he was fifteen he began to work when a few of the men showed interest in a harder touch. 

A few years ago, he began to be rented out to Chau, who eventually decided he had need of a runner. Someone innocent, as he said, to move money for him.

Chuck’s life had changed, but at the same time, he always wondered at what cost. 

“ What’s the drop?” he asked, looking down submissively, wishing he could kill the both of them.  _ Destroy  _ them.

“Payment and a letter,” said Wilmoth. “To be dropped to a man named Andres Lozano. You’ll be taking the train north to Brookfield to meet him. Cooney and I will be accompanying, but we won’t be together. You understand.”

Wanting to hiss something about  _ move your own damn payment,  _ Chuck nodded instead. He didn’t want to be punched, or have something broken, because he felt like being willful.

Wilmoth put down a small bag, presumably with payment and letter, and Chuck’s ticket as well as his meagre fee. The bar itself was his fee, or very nearly so.

“Train leaves at eight am. Brookfield by noon. You’ve already a return ticket.” The two of them stood, and Wilmoth grinned, tucking his thumbs in his belt along the wide expanse of his belly. “I trust it won’t be too hard?”

“No,” answered Cooney for Chuck. “And don’t be so weak, whore. I like you fiesty. I don’t normally go for boys. I usually want tits that stand up and a nice wet box to clench what I push, but I’d go for you. I’d have you.”

Chuck glared at him, his cheeks going a dark red, as his hand clenched and unclenched wishing for a knife, for anything. Pain throbbed dully in his wrist, watching them go. Watching them laugh, as the batwings swung shut.

  
  
  


 


	3. Chapter 3

I.

The Edge was a drop of cliffs that started to hint towards badlands, an arid area that dropped into low hills. Scrubland and farmers fields where they grew corn or pokeberries up top gave way to coloured cliffs striping back through times unknown as the elevation dropped.

Herc went on memory, paying closer attention by day, since he had less of a purpose then than he had before. There were no-doubt haunted, abandoned places lining the ride down to the Edge. Old mills, mining tipples standing tall with their sunbleached wood greying into time, dried to weakness. Even rusted, decayed things that sometimes moved with loud creaks like a bird dipping its head to water with LaMerk stamped along the side were seen, long since given away to time.

Where Greg Fullerton lived was an old ranch. He didn’t use much of it, Herc had figured, except to take sweet smelling devil grass and weave it. Sniff it. Let the dreams of madness take him, out there on the edge of things. For all appearances, he was just an old Weed Chewer.

Or there was more that Herc hadn’t discovered, hiding away. More hidden for Chau. Mayhap he’d find something out. At the very least, he’d have a long overdue talk with Stacker Pentecost.

The horse was foaming some, when they reached the place, and sweat was making the one-time gunslinger sticky and hot. He saw a white horse tethered before the homestead, and it pawed the ground agitatedly when he rode up.

No one else was there, not visibly anyway.

Ignoring its warnings, he tethered the gelding at the other end of the fence where the trough was. A well, pressured by the looks of things, trickled away and filled it with a clear water into the mossy steel.

Eureka at once dipped his head to drink. Herc was thirsty and took a pull at his own waterbag, not daring to trust the stuff his horse was ready for.

“Easy,” he said to the other, who was making an annoyed, panicked sound. A mare, unimpressed with the new arrivals. She was rubbed well, though, and good stock. No mutie on her.

She made an annoyed sound.

Herc wasn’t about to force a friendship though. He was just turning when he heard a voice, and was surprised when it wasn’t Stacker’s.

“You there!” the voice was female, accented. He couldn’t place it, but he figured she was from far off as he turned. Her face was unfamiliar. “Who are you?”

He hid the iron on his hip with the duster, calculating. She was small, but looked fast. Her bow was at the ready, the tip of the arrow glinting in the sunlight. He wouldn’t beat the speed she could loose the string at, though if she missed he’d easily kill her before the second arrow was drawn.

He raised his hands.

“Hercules.”

“Hercules _what?”_

“Hansen. Herc Hansen.”

She stopped moving, staring distrustfully. She didn’t relax the string. Up close he could see she was pretty, with black eyes and a slight mouth pushed into a hard line.

“Where are you from?”

“I’ve been riding from the east.” Code for exile, in some ways. “I heard the sheriff was here and came to talk.”

It made her other eye open, and she shifted, assessing the threat.

“Your name, sai?” he asked.

“Mako Mori.”

“And you’re here, pointing an arrow at me because?”

“Someone was murdered here yesterday. A man named Fullerton. I’m here to investigate.”

“Deputy?”

“No.”

She lowered the bow then, and after another calculating moment, she released the string and took the arrow away, putting it into her quiver, pulling the bow over her head to sit at her shoulder. She was dressed in black with gloves on her hands, and when she pulled them off her skin was tough from work.

They shook hands.

“What do you want with Sheriff Pentecost?” she asked, after a few long moments of calculating, staring at each other.

“We’re old friends.”

“He’s never mentioned you,” she said.

“Maybe not by name.”

“Hm.”

She walked away a moment, then glanced back.

“I saw your iron. This man was shot. You killed him, I’d wager.”

“Never met a man named Fullerton in my life.”

She snorted, a derisive sound, and kept walking towards the house. Having nothing better to do, he followed at a sedate pace, keeping an eye on her. She had steel around her waist. He hadn’t seen that kind of sword before, but he reckoned she could use it and use it well.

Inside it was messy, like a man who didn’t care about where he lived. His things were scattered about, the wash basin filthy and old. Wead was braided intricately, hanging in loops on the walls like deadly ropes ready to kill. The place stank of the sick-sweet smell.

“What did Hannibal want with a weed chewer?” she asked out loud, but her tone sort of distant like she wasn’t expecting an answer.

“You have a problem with Chau?”

She looked back at him. “You ain’t from around here. But yes I do. You ken Onibaba?”

“No,” he said, and repeated the strange word. “That a demon?”

“That’s a woman who may as well be. Worked for him.”

She stopped in the middle of the room, chewing her lip.

“It’s Ka, brought you here.”

“Ka brings us everywhere.”

“But you. You killed Fullerton. You left your shells, and Stacker… he’s a gunslinger too. Like you used to be, I’ll wager. He knew those slugs. Old slugs. In-World slugs.”

Herc’s eyes narrowed.

“Ka brought you. And I’d say avoid the Sheriff somewhat more, and help me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m after the same. Hannibal Chau dead in the hardpan.”

ii.

The train station wasn’t in Breach. Breach was too far out of the way for that old decrepit line to run, and no one knew steel shaping for rails anymore, so no one expanded the train. A few people knew to run it, and there was still coal in some places coming out of the mountain, so it ran. But when the train died, it would die, and that would be that.

Until then…

Chuck took a coach out there, claiming a sick friend in Brookfield. He stood in the dusty train station in decent clothes, like he was really off visiting. His frock coat was well maintained, and he was in his best double breasted vest in navy blue, checking his pocket watch from time to time as the minutes clicked on by.

In the distance he saw the first glimmer off the front of the train before he heard it, and breathed a sigh of relief. The heat of the day was murder, and he wanted to be done.

Pacing some, he thought about the letter he had, and the payment. He hadn’t chanced a look inside, but he knew well enough what those rough pebbles were inside of the parchment envelope sealed with red wax.

The train station was small and unmanned. A small metal machine, rusted out and saying TICKETS in what Chuck could only assume was in the High Speech and unreadable for him, said LaMerk on the side like every other bit of steel contraptions. He studied it a moment, an ancient relic of times long past, before he went back to the box office that was empty and dusty with sand. Inside was another machine that said _Nozz-A-La,_ showing cans of coloured things on the frunt. It was punched open, cracked and empty.

He checked his things again, with a slow marvel at the paper he was carrying.The fact that Chau had real parchment envelopes and paper to write things on was a testament to how rich he was, and how obvious it was he was bent.

Chuck couldn’t remember anyone else in town having that much paper other than Chau.

He could hear the train now, and knew that inside would be Cooney and Wilmoth, waiting for him to sit in eyeshot.

Why couldn’t they move their own shit? It drove Chuck half-mad, that Chau still wanted to use Chuck in some way shape or form, since he was a whore no more. Though if Chau asked, Chuck might have no choice than to go into his bed again if he had to.

The train pulled up in a squeal of steal and dust. Chuck coughed some, as it finally settled and the doors opened.

A family got out, coal miners by the look of them. Breach had its fair share. Even a prospector was there, much luck to him, trying to find what deadly relics he could out in the desert and scrublands. It was a dangerous task, that.

Chuck showed the conductor his ticket. The man was wearing a faded, pathetic excuse for a uniform, something that had moved on with the world it seemed, just like the gray hair sticking out from under his cap.

He didn’t know why he had to smother a smile, thinking of it.

Not first class for him, no, it was third, and he could see Cooney and Wilmoth smoking cigarettes when he entered the cabin. The air was thick, since the windows weren’t open, and Chuck couldn’t help but breathe in the tobacco stink of the two of them on the far end of the train.

He sat, thanked the conductor, and closed his eyes as the steam whistled and with a lurch the train came to life a few minutes later, chugging along the track.

Chuck dozed some, and watched out the window. Land that always looked the same moved on past, and Chuck imagined the sea out there somewhere on the edge of things, glittering and blue. He’d seen it once, from a distance. He’d not gone close, having heard of strange mutants that asked strange questions and ate everything they saw.

They were perhaps an hour into their journey when the train lurched with a squeal of brakes. Chuck’s fingers tightened on the seat and he held on as the entire thing shuddered, threatening to throw people off track.

In the aisle, he noticed Cooney go running up towards the front, through second and first. Probably checking on the problem.

Apprehension tight in his stomach, wondering why bad things had to happen when he had to work for Chau, he settled back in his seat.

A minute later, Cooney reappeared. In a loud voice directed to Wilmoth but meant for Chuck, he heard him say muties must have stacked rocks and branches on the train tracks.

That was when they heard the sound of hooves, and then a scream and a whinny from a horse. Chuck slid over, next to the window, and wished he’d brought some kind of weapon with him even though he knew behind him Chau’s men were loading their bahs.

Seconds ticked on, before the door to the cabin opened and people spilled through. A few from second, a few from first, the hassled looking conductor, and another few workers, these splattered with blood.

There was a boom in the cabin that shook the walls, and it took Chuck a moment to realize it was a real gunshot and someone screamed.

Chuck turned to look, saw Wilmoth cradling bloody hands filled with splinters. His bah was in shambles.

Feeling sick, he looked back, and saw two bandits in serape’s enter. Their faces were covered with bandanas, hats pulled low. One had gloves on, with a bow drawn, and the other had real guns.

Three more followed, glanced at the one with guns like they were deferring to a leader, before one of them spoke up. Their voices were familiar, but Chuck couldn’t place them. They were generic in their own way, and Chuck didn’t recognize the brown eyes that glinted from them.

“Listen up! This is a hold up!” The leader of the five raised his own bah, this one loaded with two bolts, and Chuck marvelled at the technology a moment, before his eyes went to the one with the guns. “All of you will get your money out, your papers, your valuables, and your weapons. This one here,” he nudged at the man of the same height next to him, “will gather them. And if any of you pathetic things move, we’ll shoot on sight.”

Chuck thought about the rough pebbles against his leg, hidden away where they probably wouldn’t find them. Probably.

He gave over his poke, his pocket watch, and the second man barely glanced at him.

It was the one with the guns whose eyes went furious, when they met Chuck’s.

He surged forward, and Chuck balled his fists but he didn’t dare fight the iron shoved under his chin. There was a moment when their eyes met, and Chuck was something in awe of eyes the colour of a dusty sky when he realized _he knew them._

Herc, he almost said, in terror, as he was yanked from the seat without any sign of gentleness.

“This one’s hiding something,” said the bandit, it was Herc, no denying it. And Chuck hated himself for the thrill that rough voice brought out in him.

With barely a glance at any other, listening to one of the other men threaten someone at the back to sit _down_ or their hands would be just as bad - _Cooney -_ Chuck was pulled from third into second class. A second later, he was shoved into a compartment.

Chuck hit the floor, his hands and knees stinging. He turned in time to see the door slide shut, lock. He looked down the barrel of that merciless gun.

“You,” said Herc, tugging his bandana down. “You’re just a barman. And you’re on a train with Chau’s men. So you better start talking, now, before I start making assumptions.”

Thinking about telling him to mind his own fucking business, Chuck instead thought about how this might be Ka. It might be a way out.

He swallowed. “I’m doing a drop for them.”

Wrong answer, it seemed, as Herc moved forward, catching Chuck by the throat, slamming him against the wall. His eyes were fury. Hawk eyes, gunslinger eyes.

“Against my will!” he rasped, and Herc’s lip curled, the pressure eased off.

“Explain.”

Chuck slid down the wall, as Herc let go, and he retched a bit, tears in his eyes. “I used to be Chau’s gilly. Against what I wanted. He… liked me. And Sasha wanted the money. He got me out of the whorin’ business so I could start my own, but now if he calls…”

“You jump.”

There was a tense moment, and Herc sat down. His gun was still pointed at Chuck, like trust was a foreign thing. Chuck supposed it must be.

“What’s the drop?”

“A letter. Some diamonds.”

Herc raised an eyebrow at that, and Chuck opened his waistcoat, pulling first the letter, then he reached through his waistband to peel the payment from his leg, and he handed that over too.

Just as shocked with the paper as Chuck was, Herc turned it over a few times, before he reached over and opened the compartment door a crack.

“Hile!”

The slight man with the bow appeared, and Chuck realized he knew those black eyes too well, as they took the payment and letter in their hands, tucked them away, and disappeared. Mako Mori, daughter of the Sheriff, in a train robbery?

The door slid shut again, and Herc looked at him.

“What for?”

“I know not.”

“Fine. Get out, front of the carriage.”

Chuck sensed a lack of mercy. A shutting off. This would be the last he saw Herc, and with a sudden lurch of pain he knew he couldn’t have that.

“I’ll help you track down Chau. I can do that. I can pull him in.”

Herc looked back, half interested. “You really want to be caught up in this, boy?” he asked.

“Yes. Ka.”

Herc snorted. “I’ve had my fill of that word. Fine. Go back, and we’ll deal in Breach.”

Shaking his head, Chuck stood up. “They’ll kill me if they think I gave up all that without a fight,” said Chuck.

There was a long moment, staring at each other, and Herc looked on the edge of upset. “You ask that I rough you up?”

Nodding, Chuck tried to tell himself he was ready for the pain.

Herc sighed. “You’re right.”

He stood, raised his gun, took his finger off the trigger, and swung.

It was almost like a game, a painful one. Chuck tasted blood, felt his cheek swell. His ‘fine clothes’ were ripped, and he attacked Herc like he wanted to show he was a fighter.

In the compartment, they kissed, before Herc pulled his hair and Chuck punched, clawed, did what he could. He tasted blood and spit, and Herc groaned as he pushed Chuck back against the glass divider. There was a moment as legs spread, and Chuck hoped he could hide his erection as they broke apart. His head was aching, but his need was still there.

Herc licked blood from his lip, making Chuck’s cock spasm in response.

“Good enough?”

“Much more and it’ll look on purpose,” said Herc, holding Chuck’s arm in another tight vice.

He dragged him forward. Mako spared a look of sympathy, the other two nameless men appeared with full bags.

Chuck was shoved towards the seats.

“Let this be a lesson,” said Herc, in a savage growl, as people looked on him. Play acting, Chuck winced, looked shamed. “I could see in his eyes he was hiding something, and the last you all want is for me to think the same.”

No one said a word, as the four bandits disappeared, and no one moved for maybe ten minutes after that.

Chuck looked up after a few moments, meeting Wilmoth’s and Cooney’s eyes, and they looked angry, but not enough to hurt him more, maybe.

That might be from Chau. For Chau.

The train lurched after another ten, and Chuck felt small, as the train began to move once more onto Brookfield.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ka - Destiny


	4. Chapter 4

i.

In the confusion of having to deal with the sheriff in Brookfield and finding a way home, Chuck lost sight of Cooney and Wilmoth. Presumably they made the drop, or what they could of it, because Chuck had nothing to take to the drop himself.

It was dark when he got back to Breach. Without money to pay for a coach he had to walk the several miles of rough road, his head starting to ache worse and worse as time went on. His mind was spinning, making up fake claims of the man who beat him, working over the lies in his head.

Why did Herc rob a train? Was it because of what he was doing for Chau?

The glittering lights of Breach, with its few ‘lectric lights still managing to run on nuclear slugs, was a welcome sight. The place smelled of home, and he was thankful he still had his keys as he walked up main street to the Lucky Seven, imagining maybe a good hot wash, several whiskey’s. Sleep, blessed sleep.

He paused though, when he reached the doors of his place. The drunk, Curt, was outside of them sleeping in a devil weed induced haze, smelling like that sickly sweet grass and piss. Chuck was staring more at the batwings. The main doors were open, and there was a soft sound of music from the often disused piano, and the lamps were all lit.

Knowing what it meant, Chuck swallowed down the bolt of fear and walked past Curt and into the bar, into his familiar scents and sounds that just then felt like a stranger's home.

Back to Chuck, a man was seated at the central-most table. He was the only patron, but patron wasn’t the right word. Not for him. His hair was neatly brushed, his suit a deep crimson. Chuck could smell cooked meat, and it made his stomach snarl at once.

There was no lull in the music. The man playing did not stop and look back. He was like a ghost playing with nothing more than habit. Chuck made no sound, but Chau knew he was there anyway. He always knew everything, it felt like.

“Charles,” he said, in greeting, and Chuck's feet found their movement then, walking around the table to get a look at the man.

Chau said nothing as Chuck came around the table. There was no plate set for him, but there was a glass of water there. Despite how thirsty he was from his several mile walk through the scrublands, he didn’t touch it.

“I received an interesting telegram today Charles,” said Chau, taking a drink from his own glass, short, unchipped. A bottle of whiskey sat on the table, Chuck's best.

“Oh?” he asked, without much inflection.

“Yes,” Chau continued, setting down the glass, picking up his utensils and continuing to cut up what was left of the meat on his plate. “A telegram about a robbery. And how you were beaten,” he waved his hand at Chuck's obvious injuries, “and how my money was taken from you.”

Swallowing uncomfortably, Chuck knew this last was more of a laying of blame than some kind of human display of concern. “He thought I was hiding something.”

“So I heard. Now why would this man with guns think that? It seems strange, that of all the people on the train, he thinks that of someone with _diamonds,_ my diamonds, strapped to his leg.”

Not knowing what to say, Chuck stared at the food on Chau’s plate. It was a thick chop of steak, seasoned with salt and probably pepper. Next to it was a husk of corn, some beans. All that could really grow around the area. Chuck was so hungry.

“Why did he pick you?”

He felt like his tongue was lead. “I don't fucking know. I tried not to look at him.”

“So you don't know who the man with my money is?”

“No.”

“You never saw his face?”

“He had a black bandanna,” said Chuck, sounding lame. “But I-”

Hannibal Chau held up a hand. With his other he dabbed his lips with a napkin before throwing it down, as if they were at some fancy restaurant and not the local honky tonk.

“Chuck, here's my problem with this. Your train, _my_ train, happened to be the one robbed today. And you happened to get singled out because you _tried not to look at him._ Can you see my problem with this? You're my boy Chuck, I don't like getting mad. I don't like doing this.”

The music had stopped, Chuck realized, and he tensed just before he was pushed down onto the tabletop, hard.

“Fuck!” he swore, pushing back, but they only pressed down harder. Following that, a knife bit point down into the wood near Chuck’s eye so he could focus on that fine edge.

“Chau this is _my place!”_

“My place! I let you run it. Your name might be on the deed, but it’s still mine, Charles. Don’t you forget it.”

Chuck grit his teeth, struggling a little on the table top, hating every single word coming out of Chau’s mouth. Despising that they were true in their own ways.

“If he beat you, you saw his face,” said Chau, leaning down, his hand on the golden hilt of the knife. “Tell me.”

“He had a black-”

“You are a son of a whore, an orphan,” said Chau calmly, though the point of the knife dug deeper into the wood with a soft _snck_. “And you will tell me if you are thankful for this life you have. You could still be _my_ whore, Chuck Smith.”

Chuck swallowed, his forehead aching where Chau’s man was leaning on it, and his fingers worked angrily underneath of the table.

“I scratched him,” he lied, the words blurted out and desperate, as he thought to work up a story. “He’s got a cut on his cheek from it! Has - has brown eyes, I think. Dark hair. I swear to the Man Jesus, he had a black bandanna, but I scratched him!”

The pressure eased from his head, which was pounding miserably now, and he groaned as Chau stood straight and pat him sympathetically.

“There, you can be reasoned with, boy. I’ll call on you soon.”

Chuck didn’t move. Not until he heard the door close, the full doors. Only then did he raise his head, first to look at a mostly eaten meal cooling on the plate, then behind him.

He was alone.

With a sigh, Chuck got up and cleaned up the table. Balancing plates, the salt shaker, the butter, he carried everything back with slow care. The kitchen was messy with cooking, scattered ingredients. With an unnatural calm, he started to clean those too, even though he needed a wash, needed food and water before he passed out.

What was he doing, washing up for someone like Chau?

It was only then Chuck realized what he was thinking, wishing for. Chau, dead at his feet. Shattered, like that cup. Maybe with a bullet through his head that Chuck put there.

He wished he were a gunslinger.

ii.

  
  


Mako Mori, it seemed, was a gunslinger in her own way. Herc despised the way only boys born to the gun could pass those trials, because a woman like Mako Mori would be a shining gift to everything the gunslingers of Gilead stood for.

She had a place near the Edge where they road after their haul. The Wei’s were highwaymen, handy with their bolts in the way Mako was handy with her bow. Herc thought in another life they could be gunslingers too, but they’d chosen crime and while they were against Chau, they felt more like men for hire than true believers.

Herc could respect their need for money, but he respected causes more.

The letter was coded. Mako said it was for some kind of extremely important smuggling, something for the Good Man, Farson. She couldn’t say what, but she was betting it was big.

“Where would he hide that?” Herc had asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she replied. “But I’ll be inquiring into some of the larger, more discreet ranches.”

Herc was alright with that. Gave him more time with Chuck. He had plans for the boy.

The ride back was blessedly quiet. After the day, Herc could use the open road, nothing but him and Eureka and the hardpan.

He spotted two strange horses at the Lucky Seven and decided to board Eureka elsewhere, deciding this meant trouble. There was no way that Chuck could be back from wherever he’d gone yet, so the bar was open but the wrong person was there.

After leaving Eureka with the man called Jake Aguero who, Herc felt sure, would have been happy to steal from him and maybe kill him, he headed back to the Lucky Seven.

In the yard out back he could smell cooking meat, the scent making Herc’s stomach growl. He crept to the door and glanced inside, unsurprised to see a man who wasn’t Chuck preparing a meal.

He could be patient, though, and he chewed a piece of jerky as he waited. When the sounds of cooking stopped, and the man left the tiny kitchen, Herc let himself inside to listen, and to watch.

Seeing Chau sitting like he owned the place nearly made Herc pull his gun. But it wasn’t time. Not yet. Not until Chau was ruined.

It was harder still, to watch him taunt and hurt Chuck. He wondered when he’d opened his heart to the boy.

“I could have killed him,” he said conversationally, from the corner he was lurking in, when Chuck came in with Chau’s dishes like he was doing just another job. He waited until he’d set them down before speaking, at least, and it was with amusement that he watched Chuck yelp.

Chuck whirled on him like an angry cat, though. “You bastard,” he snapped. It made Herc smile.

“Do you plan on giving me up?”

Chuck blushed hotly as he continued to clean. “Don't be stupid.”

“I'm not. You trying to keep yourself safe isn't a stretch.”

Chuck gave him a glare as he put the dirty dishes into the tub, before he headed to draw water. “I'm serious about wanting to be rid of that man. Even letting you hit me wasn't enough to convince him I might be bent, and you expect me to want to _keep_ that sort of relationship up? You obviously saw. Though why you didn’t step in is beyond me.”

Herc shrugged. He took off his hat, putting it down. “He doesn’t need to know I exist yet.”

Chuck snorted derisively. “So he isn’t aware of this mysterious stranger, this gunslinger, out to destroy him?”

“No,” said Herc, “I doubt it. He probably thinks me dead.”

Chuck gave him a look at that. His face was swollen, he had dried blood in his hair, a cut on his cheek. He didn’t look good, but he did look fierce the way his eyes narrowed. Gunslingers eyes, thought Herc, not for the first time about the boy.

He waited, because he knew there were questions. And he might have to give answers, because he’d beat the boy. He owed him something other than another fuck.

Herc’s hands twitched at the guns at his hip, and he thought of the extras in his gunna.

“Why are you after Chau?” asked Chuck, continuing to clean.

“He killed my wife and child,” said Herc, bluntly, and watched Chuck’s movements stutter, like he hadn’t expected a direct answer.

“When?”

“You were just a babby, I reckon. Maybe a little older.” He sighed. “You asked why a man stops becoming a gunslinger. That was part of it.”

It was maybe more involved, but it was partly true. He hoped Chuck appreciated that.

“And why shouldn’t I give you up?”

“Because he owns you.”

“More the reason.”

“Less than.”

“You’re fucked up,” said Chuck, after a minute. The dishes were soaking, his movements were drunken. Like from fatigue, pain. Lack of food and drink, maybe.

“No more than you,” said Herc.

They stared at each other again, then Chuck sat down like he’d hit his limit. He probably had. Herc got up then, to get water for the boy, to at least fight dehydration.

Chuck took the glass before the cup was even set for him, and he was gulping it. The boy was made out of something hard and fierce, like he was cut from leather.

It made his decision all the easier.

“I’m going to train you,” he said. “You need to learn to defend yourself. You’re past age but you’re spry.”

Chuck stopped moving then, his entire body freezing in a peculiar way, like an animal caught in lantern light.

"...train me." His tone was strange but Herc caught the excitement beneath it. Clearly Chuck was containing himself, and it made Herc smile slightly.

"Yes. I'm looking for a place to do it, too. Somewhere remote, away from people. I heard tell of Pitfall Canyon."

Chuck made a face at that. "It's far and no good."

"Why? Far is good." Herc moved over to him, his eye critical of his wounds now. He reached into his gunna bag laying on the table and fished for something within it. Wrapped in soft deer skin he found it, a tiny glass pot filled with something green. When he opened the lid it was alcoholic and herbal smelling.

Settling into a relaxed position, Chuck kept his eyes on Herc’s hands. He barely winced, at the cool touch of the ointment on the first of his cuts.

"Pitfall has a thinny," he said after a moment of treatment.

Herc frowned at the word. He wasn't sure he knew what it meant. It was familiar in an unpleasant way, just the sound was like a nail down the spine. It was bad, whatever it was.

"A thinny?"

"It's a word used out west," said Chuck, moving his head to give Herc better access to different spots. "Stacker told me when I was a boy the world was moving on."

"So it is."

"And as it does, spots get thin and stretched. Points pull apart and a thinny is made. Some are... Safe. And some are hungry."

"And Pitfall?"

"The hungriest."

The crease between Herc’s eyes got deeper. "I think perhaps I need to see this. You can take me?"

Chuck shuddered.

Herc growled at the display of fear. If the boy was to become something like a gunslinger he had to move past that.

"Remember the face of your father and buck up," he said, feeling like Richard, his trainer once upon a time. Thinking of the name brought a crashing of memories, but he lidded them as he closed the pot and turned back to face Chuck. "If you can't venture near it then mayhap you can't wield a gun."

That was enough to steel the boy up. Herc watched it with satisfaction, as his face grew determined behind his wounds. His eyes could cut.

"Better," he said. "Now drink. I'll fetch food."

Not expecting Chuck able to eat much, he made leftover eggs from that morning and cut corn bread. The boy shoveled it down when given it, obedient to a fault. But Herc knew with the right weapons his obedience would be a weapon and his fire could be properly turned out to their enemies.

He took Chuck upstairs and loved him slow and long under the blankets. The way he sounded reminded Herc of someone he'd loved long ago, and it made him kiss Chuck hungrily, like he could get those things back. Things he’d lost.

When they were done and Herc had his arm about the boy he thought to ask, as he mulled over training. What to say, how best to imitate Richard. And now not to be so much like the crusty old bastard that he intimidated Chuck completely into a puling cow.

"What's your father's name?"

Chuck didn't reply for a long moment, but Herc knew better than to think he was asleep. For a lad that wouldn’t shut up during the day, he seemed to resent pillow talk more than any man or woman that had spread his legs for Herc before.

"Dunno. My adopted... Father, said I ought not to know."

"Hmm."

Herc kept awake, same as Chuck he was sure. His calloused thumbs stroked slow, and he stares at a little cluster of moles on one shoulder that made him think of Angela.

It was that thought that made Herc speak again.

"Your mother?"

Sleepy, it was a minute before he got his reply. "...Angie."

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's quite a few slurs using the word wh*re, so if it bothers you, don't read it. It's a western, and while I don't always agree with time age appropriate language in fic, this one was hard to avoid, especially considering the original material I'm drawing from. I apologize in advance for it.

I.

Herc didn’t lay long in the darkness. As soon as Chuck’s breathing was even he let himself out of the bed, tucking a pillow in next to the boy’s body. Wrath was pooled in his stomach, but he still had a sort of gentleness in him for the boy.

Memories were hot in his head as he slung his guns around his hips, getting dressed in the darkness with only the dim glow of ‘lectric lights shining through the window at him.

The name was a chant in his head.

He paused once, over Chuck, staring at him. Imagining the little boy he’d once known. Small, in a smock and short pants, running along with grubby hands. 

Guilt burned in his stomach, looking at him now. Beaten by his hand and gun, fucked out and sleeping in the glow of pleasure. He hardly knew the boy.

He couldn’t let the guilt or tenderness control him now, though. Not when there were questions to be asked of a man he never expected to need interrogate.

Sheriff Stacker Pentecost’s home was off Main Street. It had no space around it but a single tree growing high over the windows, and from the back an easy clip towards the jail for Stacker to travel. 

He paused only a moment, to look at the flickering light inside the jailhouse, before letting himself inside. He knew Luna kept the house, with Mako sometimes, but neither of the women lived there, preferring their own independance. 

As predicted, the house was empty. There was a scent of cooked meat on the air, of tea over steeped in the pot. He stared past them, going to the chair in the living room and sitting, gun trained on the kitchen door.

He waited.

II.

Weary from a day of searching, of dealing with the few inmates he had at the jail, Stacker walked home with empty trays of dishes. He did the cooking for the inmates, when Luna and Mako could not.

He entered through the kitchen, and didn’t immediately know something was amiss as he put down the trays near the wash basin. He wiped his hands, thinking about the casings he was keeping in his pocket. Spent shells that meant a man of the gun was nigh, despite the ignored letters he’d sent to Gilead.

When Stacker stepped towards the living room he caught it, the whiff of horse, of leather. Of another human, in his space, and something familiar that pulled at old memories in the same way the spent shells did. His hand went for his gun, the urge bred into him from decades of training. His hand touched the sandalwood grips and he squeezed, ready to draw, but a familiar, deep voice stopped him.

“Stand down, Stacks.”

Stacker hummed, a tuneless acquiescence. “Hercules Hansen.”

He stepped into the living room, hand dropping from the butt of his guns. He wasn’t pleased to see the ghostly face waiting for him, the face of a man he’d thought dead for many years. 

“Does this surprise you?”

Stacker wanted to say no. But he’d thought he’d lost his friend decades before, to tragedy. To their own inexperience. 

“Yes.”

“My boy?”

“I kept him safe.”

He knew Herc wanted to shoot him. The barrel of one of those legendary guns was on him, pointed at his heart. And that it was only the silence of the night that kept a shot ringing past or through him.

“You let him become a whore.”

“I kept him safe.”

“ You let a boy of the Gun -  _ my boy,  _ my  _ son -  _ become a gods damned whore!”

“He has his own place!”

“ You know what he is! What kind of life he’s had!” Herc stood, the gun still trained on him, unwavering despite the movement. “Raised by whores. Used by  _ Chau.” _

History pounded between the two of them, as Stacker remembered everything that had happened in a town not so far from Breach. 

“What would you have had me done?”

“Raised him by the gun, gods damn it!”

Stacker’s jaw clenched. “I couldn’t. I was a boy too. He was a child. I couldn’t take him. When Sasha Kaidanovsky offered there was nothing a worthless boy like myself could do to stop it.”

Herc’s eyes narrowed, but after a moment he lowered his gun. There was enough between the two of them that he might do that much.

“I’ve tried to watch him and keep him safe. After I became Sheriff it was easier.” Stacker sat down, deciding if Herc was intending to kill him he would have by now. “Luna tried too, Stacker, but your boy is willful.”

He could see well enough that Herc agreed, as the Gunslinger sat down as well. When last they’d seen each other Stacker had thought him killed, betrayed by his own brother. A long time had gone on between then and now. 

“We’re old men now, Stacks,” said Herc, finally. “I need to be getting back.”

Stacker blinked, disgust creeping into his expression. “You’re the man whom’s been laying with the boy.”

Herc gave Stacker a dark look. “I’ll be moving on from there tomorrow, Stacker. We’ll talk more soon. I hope the in the time I give you, you’ll have a proper explanation, when I’m not so ready to put a bullet between your neglecting eyes.”

Stacker wasn’t sure he was entirely deserving of a bullet, but he wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t, either. Not when he’d thought he let Herc die, for the cause of the gun itself.

III.

There was a grey rain outside, a dreary thing that turns ugly land uglier with its mists and mud. The sound of raindrops on the warped glass of the window was what woke Chuck up, eyes coming open slowly, feeling achy but good in its own way.

He was alone, though, and he noticed that seconds later, rolling in the feather bed to find it vacant and cold to the touch.

Mouth in something of a grim line, Chuck got out of the bed and first looked out the window. Rain was rare, and he could hear it  _ pat-patting  _ in the black basin on the rooftop that was patched over and nearly useless, catching rainwater for his stores.

With a last look at the foggy, dirty looking weather over Breach he went to his dresser and peered in the cracked mirror, surprised to find the swelling down and his face approaching decent. Whatever had been in the salve Herc used and worked.

Getting dressed, knowing he had promised Herc to ride with him to the god-forsaken place they called Pitfall, he went downstairs expecting to find the man smoking and waiting for breakfast. But the place was deserted, and Chuck merely sighed as he started to prepare his own, finding evidence Herc had eaten and left, leaving behind a few dirty dishes and another gold coin Chuck couldn’t break into change. Useless bit of metal, really.

He ate some of what he gathered from the hens and the last few pieces of cornbread he had. Cleaning, he didn’t bother saying good-morning when the man finally decided to show himself and came into the kitchen.

Herc moved past him, like some kind of silent golem, and sat in the corner. Chuck spared him one look, and when he saw Herc light a hand rolled cigarette he clucked his tongue once, nodding at the window next to him.

Without a word of sorry, Herc opened it and blew a plume of smoke out the window. Chuck didn’t partake himself, but he breathed deep the unusual, rich smell of tobacco smoke and enjoyed it second hand in his own way. Sasha always smoked too, and it made Chuck think of being a little boy as she told him stories of her youth while smoking and drinking, letting Chuck sit on her lap like he was hers.

When he was done, and so was Herc, he finally looked at him and crossed his arms. Like some kind of staring bird of prey, Herc watched Chuck.

Chuck broke the silence first. “So are we getting a move on? Pitfall’s a few wheels and I want some customers today as I lost ‘em yesterday.”

Herc grunted his reply, standing, heading for the kitchen doors. Wondering what had stuck in his craw that morning, Chuck followed, took his heavier travelling coat, and shut the door behind him. 

There was another horse in the yard that hadn’t been there. Chuck recognized it as Mako’s mare, Tsukiko. It seemed in a foul mood to see Herc, but she was a temperamental beast.

Lucky, Chuck knew her well enough. He took oats and offered them, and she knickered at him at least before letting him feed her, brush his hand over her white flanks. She didn’t relax, but she nuzzled at him.

“That horse is the most bad tempered bitch I’ve known, and yet it takes to you,” said Herc, finally breaking his silence.

Chuck brushed his hand through her mane now. “I just know her better.”

Riding in the rain wasn’t ideal. The saddle was wet, and Chuck knew he’d be aching for warmth by the time he returned. He was fighting down anger the entire time they rode from town and out on the path to the Edge. Above, the clouds seemed to churn along and push in a line with them, as they always did. Chuck had no idea why.

They road down the valleys where Chuck remembered going as a boy and finding old teeth in the canyon walls. The road snaked past giant standing Hoodoo’s, creepy things that Aleksis used to tell him were giants that came to life after the dark. Each was a pillar of sandstone, with it’s cap balanced precariously, markers as they wound further and further.

They passed an old weathered sign that read ‘P tfa l, 1 Wh el,’ and some child or drunken adult had scribbled various specimens of the male anatomy into the wood, brighter and newer.

“There’s the hot springs,” said Chuck, with a hand wave and a longing thought of that warm water. Nestled into a tiny valley of it’s own, a stone sort of building sat perched. Chuck remembered someone calling it ‘cuncrate’ when he was a boy, but he didn’t really think about it. From where they stopped just a moment to stare, they could smell sulphur in the air from the ancient bowels of the earth.

Herc gigged his horse first, and they continued on.

Pitfall came after the road wound up out of the ‘In Between’, the spot between the Edge and the disused fields and near-scrubland of the up top. Moving through cactus and old farmers fields long abandoned to nothing, the land was flat.

Pitfall was like a knife had cut the skin of the earth. Long before they saw it, though, they could hear it, and Herc gritted his teeth just as hard as Chuck did. No one could stand the sound, no matter how tough they liked to pretend they were.

Chuck would never tell anyone how satisfied he was, to see the self righteous arsehole who’d accused him of being a babby the night before unable to stand the sound of the thinny.

He wished he had a sound to compare it to. It trilled and warbled, cutting into your senses like a blunt wedge followed by a sledge hammer. Chuck felt his skull splintering with a headache long before the land opened up into the next canyon.

Before them, Pitfall stretched, a massive wound that was not gradual. Wind sculpted, mounds and hoodoos reached high, and as if the stretching of the world poisoned it, some places were like knives.

Nestled in the center was the thinny itself, and Chuck hated to see it.

“One thinny,” said Herc, in awe, getting off his horse. Chuck copied him, though he had no intention of picking a path down there. 

Herc hunkered, and so did Chuck, as the horses stood behind them. They stared together.

A dome of  _ something,  _ it sat like a wart on the world. It was silvery, shifting, like blue tobacco smoke caught in a glass globe, but it didn’t dissipate. It just moved, thick, streaming off the surface in small tendrils. The sound was so loud now Chuck almost had tears in his eyes from the warbling, tinny sound.

“Other places with thinny’s smoke theirs. The smoke makes them quiet. But we’re so far away we don’t need to,” said Chuck.

Herc grunted again, and Chuck felt a surge of anger at the dismissive sound. One minute he’d cared, the next, cold.

“We won’t train here,” said Herc, rising. Chuck felt a surge of relief at the words at least. “Too damn noisy for you.”

They were still staring at the pulsing thing when they saw a flock of birds startle from a scraggly clump of trees. One - a rook, probably, or crow - cut too low. Chuck winced, seeing one of those smoky tendrils reach up and snatch it from mid air, pulling it inside.

“See,” murmured Chuck, looking away. “Hungry.”

“And no one can go in?”

“Who would try?” Chuck didn't want to imagine what kind of monsters hid in there. Mako called the tendrils Kaiju when she was a child.

He didn’t get an answer, of course. Herc merely went back to Eureka, and Chuck went to Tsukiko. He was glad to put his back to the place.

They were maybe a mile down the road when he dared speak again.

“So where will we train?”

“The Edge, somewhere,” said Herc dismissively. “I’ll find a place with Mako Mori and we’ll train you. Maybe both of you.”

Chuck liked Mako, but he didn’t like her cutting in on his time with Herc, even if something had made Herc grow cold.

“Are you going to be as warm and delightful as this the entire time?”

Herc turned that predator stare at Chuck again. Chuck could see the quirk of his lips that suggested amusement, but the smile never really came. “Boy if only you knew as I know.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so damn long

i.

When the lights were down and the last of the drunks put to the street for the night, Herc packed his things. He stowed his poke away, checked on his guns, counted ammunition as he drank his way through part of a bottle of whiskey and made a solitary meal of jerky and bread.

Downstairs, the music was fading. In the hall, people were kissing. Seeking a place to sleep and to not sleep in each other's arms.

It seemed a shame he’d be sleeping on the ground, come an hour or two in the darkness.

He could hear the girl, Jazmine, departing. Chuck’s steps on the stairs. Above on the tin roof, the rain, present like it had been all day. The sound like soft, impatient fingers on a countertop.

The door opened, as Herc closed his gunna, hiding his things from sight. He had other things ready too, things Mako had given him to make a lean-to out on the edge. Things too to keep the creatures at bay, away from his camp. He wasn’t afraid of demons, but he didn’t want one sucking his blood in his sleep. He wasn’t ready to die, and certainly not under the thrall of some lesser undead thing with pale hands and pallid eyes.

“Are you leaving?”

Chuck’s voice was worried, and maybe accusatory. Herc hadn’t been the best with him since learning who he was, and he owed him some kind of explanation, but none would come. What could you say, when you loved your boy in all the wrong ways?

He turned to look at Chuck and gave a nod. “Chau’s too close to the place. I best go before it brings heat.”

“And me?”

“I’ll send for ye.”

Herc moved to go past him. He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy, as Chuck reached across him and blocked the way. The boy might not be as strong as he could be, but he wasn’t weak either. Herc admired that.

“Throw me a fuck and take off, is that it? Leave the orphan whore to wonder what was and is?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Fuck you and your words.”

Herc looked at Chuck, who stared back with a snarl starting to curl on his lips. The boy was hurt, cut deep. Too deep for Herc to heal. Not unless he did what he couldn’t. Stay. Fuck. Something.

 _You fucked your father,_ he thought to himself, before pushing the boy’s arm away. _You rode him like a witch rides her broom. You’ve seen too much of me, and I of you._

But the boy had fire.

“Tomorrow, I’ll send for ye.”

He made to move again, and Chuck refused. Herc felt impatience welling up inside of him, and he grabbed the boy by his arm hard, maybe too hard, but he couldn’t care enough. He slammed him into the wall, and somewhere in one of the rented rooms a gilly moaned loudly with her fare.

Herc wanted to let go and move on. Get on Eureka and ride.

But sin made him lean in and give Chuck another kiss, because he hadn’t known the son he’d lost, but he did know the man he’d grown to care about the last few days, and hated himself for it as he parted his lips.

Chuck gasped so sweetly.

“Let me pass,” he said, after he’d pulled away, and Chuck nodded.

“You will?” he heard behind him, when Herc reached the stares. “Send for me, I mean.”

“Aye.”

He let himself out into the rainy night.

ii.

As Herc was passing out of town under the darkness to the edge, where demons roam, a man in black was riding into Breach. It would amuse him to learn of the man riding away.

He wasn’t tall, nor was he entirely lean. His cloak masked everything about him, other than his eyes. Bright staring things, hectically so. His lips constantly moved in a smile that never seemed inviting, merely mad.

He carried a pretty bauble.

Chau’s place was just outside of town. It was still lively with people, as the man put up his horse outside and let himself in, as quick as anything, do it please ya.

Inside, the rabble of voices was high. A honky tonk played, an old town that made the man hum, muttering ‘hey Jude’ under his breath with a titter as he looked amongst the tables where men gathered to play Watch Me, or whore’s leaned to show off their assets to the drunk.

The man pinched the bottom of one such luscious lady as he passed, making her squeal, and he winked at her.

She looked quickly away, as if terrified.

He continued to the bar, where he ordered a glass of whiskey, “ _and none of that watered down crap, I want what Chau drinks. Give me that.”_

When asked for money he pushed a diamond across the bar and winked.

He needed Chau. Needed him him quickly, before the thing in his possession got squirmy and tried to get away. Not that it had legs, but it had a mind, and the mind was happy to talk to others. Give them itchy fingers.

He wanted Chau and his Kaiju. He asked the barkeep where they sat, and the barkeep told him to mind his trap.

“ _Yes I’ll mind it fine around your throat. Give me your boss, and I’ll see he doesn’t cut yours.”_

Down the bar away was a taheen. It had a rooks head, and its beak clicked to see him. They stared at each other, and the man gave it a smile which the bird could not return, frozen in its grim line of a beak.

It clicked again, then shoved off its stool. Somehow, it spoke.

“This way,” it said.

“ _Polly want a cracker?”_ asked the man, who tittered, following. Tipping back his glass, cracking it as he set it down.

They walked around the bar to a back hall. Sounds of pleasure could be heard from behind closed doors. Somewhere inside, a man moaned as a woman bounced upon him, and another wailed as her hair was pulled and a man thrust inside her.

He knew these things, but he didn’t care. He wished them luck.

The last door was at the end, and the taheen opened it with feather covered hands.

Inside there was smoke. A man like the one in the cloak was there, and he looked up in surprise, which purpled about his face. They grinned at each other, and the man inclined his head.

At a table was Chau, playing cards with his men. Kaiju, all of them. The woman Onibaba at his right, another taheen with a weasel’s face at his left. Other men, men whom the man did not care about, were littered about the place. One was sucking on a whore’s tit.

Chau didn’t look up, as the taheen moved inside, and the man followed.

The other wizard, however, moved quicker.

“ _Newton.”_

"Master O’Dim.”

The man Walter O’Dim tittered, and Newton smiled back. They were both lost, strung out by the magic they contained. And both far more crafty than they could let on. Though perhaps Walter more sly, more evil.

He felt like his eyes might bleed of it.

Chau noticed him then, and the room went silent.

“ _Ding Dong Avon Calling!”_ called Walter, stepping forward. He was grinning, he felt like there might be blood in his teeth as he did, stepping forward. “ _I’ve a delivery.”_

Each word was a serpent.

“Who are you?” Chau’s voice was serious, he was leaning forward, eyes narrowed.

“A friend of the Good Man, whom you’ve slighted, whom is ready to give thee another chance.” His voice grew serious, less teasing. But he still had the mad rictus on his face, as he pushed aside one of the men and sat. “I’ve something you are to keep. Perhaps with Newton here.”

“Everyone leave.”

The weasel’s head swiveled. Her voice was like ink. “Sir?”

“Now.”

There was a click from the other taheen, and the two of them left with the men. The last to go was Onibaba, and Walter gave her too a wink, as if she was nothing more than a gilly. She bared her teeth. He laughed.

Newton was the only one left, and he went to Hannibal Chau’s side. As if his allegiance was there and not with the Crimson Eye itself.

“ _I’ve something from the Good Man, though he do not know it. Do ye ken?”_

Chau stared as Walter placed his parcel on the table between them, among chips and money and forgotten cards with boxed edges.

“I’m not sure I do.”

“ _He doesn’t need it,”_ he said. “One has gone to Mejis. This,” he tapped it, “comes here.”

Newton seemed to realize what it meant, his face going white. It made Walter laugh, like everything did.

“And this is?”

“The Blue.” He blinked. “ _His sister goes further away, but the blue comes here.”_

Newton sat down, and Walter smiled pleasantly this time.

“ _Can you control it, Newton Geiszler?”_

“I will.”

He wouldn’t. The temptation would be too much. Just as the Pink would be too much for the holder who found it. Secrets were secrets, and secrets were fun to learn. The Blue and Pink were siblings after all.

“You, Hannibal. Will you keep it safe?”

“My boy will.”

“Will _you?”_

Hannibal nodded. “I will.”

Walter giggled, and picked up a glass of beer. He turned it back and forth before spitting inside of it. His spittle turned red, like blood, and as he swirled, the carbonation left, and it became as blood.

“Wine,” he explained. “ _Drink to your oath.”_

If Hercules Hansen had known what evil came to Breach, he would have found it and put a bullet between its eyes.

This also would have amused the man in black.

iii.

Mako came for him the following Sunday. Preachers day made sense, but Chuck was still bitter over it taking so long to get any word at all from the man. After the kiss they shared, he figured Herc must feel the same way, but then there was silence.

It capped off a strange week. A rider in black had moved through, stopped at Chuck’s bar.

He’d stared with a rictus at Chuck, and when he’d ordered he’d said so conversationally, “ _It’s extra for a full night, but free for your father.”_

The words turned uncomfortably over in Chuck’s head, wondering what it meant. As if it might be some kind of riddle.

At the end of the night, though, he’d moved on with more strange, parting words. Words that made Chuck feel sure that the travelling priest - for he was robed in black, not unlike the Manny - knew exactly what was happening in Breach, and that perhaps the man in black worked for John Farson.

“ _Forget the face of your father, though you burn to embrace it. Ka like a wind takes us all.”_

Then he laughed, when Chuck gave him a puzzled look, and shown himself out.

He rode with Mako, keeping an eye on the way there. The territory was familiar enough from his riding about as a boy, but he still didn’t want to miss anything just in case Mako took a turn into somewhere unfamiliar.

“There,” she said, when she halted. “The Sheriff needs me today, so I won’t be joining you,” she said, looking at Chuck. “But follow this road a little ways, and you’ll see a sign post with a rook’s skull hanging from it. Turn left there, down the path, and you’ll find him.”

He was nervous to go alone. Out there in the wild, werewolves and vampires and all other sorts of demons roamed. But he’d taken a knife, and he didn’t doubt Mako. So with a nod he gigged the horse onwards, thinking of how he’d have to buy his own if he could. If he had to make this journey too much.

Like she said, a weathered signpost pointed the way to a town Chuck had never heard of. Likely a ghost town without anyone daring live there, or daring to explore. The skull hung from it like an omen, and Chuck turned left down the obvious path into the woods.

Here it was greener, felt fairer. He saw nothing but a lone billy-bumbler that made a sound at him that sounded like a horse before it disappeared into the undergrowth, cork-screwed tail waving before it vanished.

He smelled fire before he found it, and stopped in a clearing. There was a tent there, a circle of stones were wood was burning. Eureka was tied to a tree.

A second later, Herc appeared from inside the tent. “See you’ve found the place.”

“See I have,” he said.

Herc nodded. “Tie your mare and we’ll palaver.”

Chuck did as he was told, biting the urge to tell him where to stick it. He was still mad at Herc, mad at him for leaving, for not calling. For everything. He felt like Herc had almost cheated him into feeling something for the older man.

But he went to the fire where Herc squatted and sat down on a log that had been rolled up.

Herc stared in the fire awhile, before turning to look at Chuck.

“I’m going to train you in the ways of the gun.”

“The ways…?”

“You’ve got fire,” Herc poked a stick through cinders and ashes, stiring it, making the flames crackle brighter a moment. “A fire even Mori doesn’t have, though she’s got her own different one. By the time we’re done here, you’ll be a Gunslinger.”

Chuck blinked. “How? I’m no boy of Gilead, to be trained there. I’m already a man, and not a man by the standards there.”

“You’ve endured more than most men. Whoring isn’t exactly easy work, though some might say it is. And whoring for _Chau.”_ Herc almost spat the words. “Anyhow. You’ll have your trial.”

“Trial?”

“Test of manhood. I had to endure one, once, when I was sixteen. I reckon you’re not much older.”

“Twenty,” said Chuck. “What happened?”

Herc poked the fire again, before setting aside the stick. “I’m here to teach you, not tell stories.”

Chuck’s face fell some, but he tried not to let it show. He knew nothing of the man than what he saw, and learning of his childhood was a delicious opportunity, but Chuck knew it wasn’t his place to ask something that was likely deeply personal.

“This is your first lesson.” Herc reached for his leather bag. “You mistreat these, and I’ll cut something off.”

Stiffening some, ready for anything, Chuck gasped to see _another_ set of those miraculous guns appear in Herc’s hand. Sandalwood grips, iron like was no longer able to be crafted. They were beautiful, with roses inlayed on the plate beneath.

“Before you touch these, I want you to quote me,” said Herc.

Looking up, he saw how grave Herc’s face was. So he swallowed hard and nodded.”

“I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye.

“I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind.

“I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.”

Chuck repeated him, making sure to get it right, feeling strange to repeat the Gunslinger's creed. Questions were bubbling up. Like how to remember a father who died well before he was born, but he knew the outburst it would get.

“Good,” said Herc. “You memorize that.”

Nodding, Chuck held out his hands. Herc placed one gun into them, and Chuck’s fingers brushed over the wood of the handle, the cold metal of the gun.

Watching, Herc seemed satisfied of the reverent way Chuck handled them.

“Good. Here’s a cloth, and some oil,” he said. “I’ll show you how to clean her. You’ll learn how to put her back together and take her apart again without blinking. Without looking.” Herc paused, staring at Chuck a long moment. “Watch me first… and listen.”

As his hands began to break apart the metal and set it on a spread out cloth, Herc began to speak.

“I was fifteen, when I felt the call in my heart. My father had just died…”

 


	7. Chapter 7

He had a day off from lessons, both from Richard the trainer and ancient Vannay the scholar. He woke up full of hope that morning, thinking of fishing with his younger brother, playing kickball in the afternoon heat with Stacker and his mates. At fifteen, life always seemed full of possibilities. A free day was a day where you could have the entire world.

Herc did his chores. His father disliked living in the city and instead chose to live on the outskirts where they could raise chickens. Herc’s work included feeding them, mucking out their coop. Sometimes his father did the tasks when he happened to be home, sometimes Scott, but it was usually Herc who split wood and stocked the pile. Herc didn’t mind. His father always said, hard work toughens the hands.

He was covered with dust, his jeans grimy with it, his white open throated shirt turning brown, when he heard the approaching hooves.

His father was away on business, to the western mountains. There was trouble in a part of the Barony of Veritas, a small mining town called Terth. It was a hard ride far away, according to his father, and they wouldn’t be able to send letters. It was anyone’s guess, when they’d see them again.

That was a fortnight past. Herc’s face split in a grin as he ran through the house, spreading dirt and mud over the tidy tiled floor, as he shouted for his mother and brother before bursting out into the front yard.

And halted, there in the front step, when he saw that his father was not with the two riders. They had packs, fresh from a long ride. He recognized them as men who’d gone with his father on their mission, and they looked grim.

Herc looked past them before his eyes flickered back to their faces. Behind him in the open door, his mother made a little sound. A sound like he’d never forget until he died.

The guns weren’t to be given to him. They were to be held in the castle, at the center of the Barony, waiting for the time when Scott or Herc, whomever pulled first, became a man.

“Give them to me,” said Herc, tossing aside the weather beaten hat his father always wore. In it were his things - his poke, a wedding ring, a necklace. Herc could hardly care. “They were _his,_ give them to _me.”_

“It’s not your place, _child,”_ said the leader.

Herc bared his teeth, fingernails digging into his palms. He wanted to rush them, but he knew what would happen. A swift kick from a sharp toed boot, a drop into the dirt of the front yard, humiliation.

The leader turned, riding off. The second stayed but a moment, giving Herc a pitying look. This one Herc knew well. Geoffry Black, who’d been around for dinner many a time. Who’d been his father’s friend since the two of them pulled at the age of seventeen.

Herc swallowed hard, meeting those soft brown eyes. Eyes like a sad, dying dog.

“Your father died afore we reached Terth. Word had us come home,” he said softly. “We’re taking men to go against those who killed him.”

Frozen in the yard, Herc said nothing. After a long moment, Black turned and followed their leader, gigging his horse onward. Back to the castle, where Herc had lived as a small child before his father had had enough.

His mother came forward. He heard her shoes clicking on the hard earth. She touched his shoulder.

Face frozen in his grief, he stepped away, her hand sliding away from his hot shoulder. His fists were bunched.

“By your leave,” he said, without any intention of taking something so simple as _leave,_ as he began to walk.

“No - Hercules, come back- don’t.”

He glanced back once. Scott was there, a year younger, his eyes wide. Still in Herc’s year, pushed forward ahead so Richard wouldn’t have the bother of too many classes. He didn’t seem to comprehend the way his mother did.

He met her eyes. Green eyes, so different from their father’s blue. From his own.

“By your leave,” he repeated, “I go to Richard.”

The call was a siren in his heart, as he let the gate swing shut behind him.

He knew Scott was sent to watch, to beg him back. He ignored all attempts his younger brother made while they were still in sight of the house, and once they were out of it Scott shoved him hard, enough that Herc stumbled.

He whirled on him, striking with his fist onto Scott’s cheek.

“You asshole,” said Scott, baring his teeth. “You think you’re the only one that grieves?”

Herc didn’t say anything.

“Fine. Die. Be sent West.”

Herc turned. He could care less if Scott bore witness, but Herc couldn’t resist the call. He had to answer it.

Richard’s home was in the courtyards of the castle. It was a squat thing, where Trainers time out of mind trained the young ones. There on the grass the young’s blood stained the earth from their mistakes. The only way the Trainers believed the young would learn was from blood and sweat and tears and humiliation.

Still full of fire, the grief making his heart constrict, he ran up the steps to the door. Kicked it open, as he paused in the dim entryway. On the table lunch was set, tea was steeping. Richard nowhere to be seen.

“ _Richard!”_ he called, speaking the High Speech, “ _I call for you, Bondsman!”_

There was a sound in the doorway ahead of him and Richard appeared, hands wiping on a rag. His face was scarred over from years of teaching, from years of fighting and sometimes besting boys on their Call. He was a thick man, heavy around the shoulders, muscles corded and taut, a belly like steel.

He contemplated Herc for a long moment, eyes mean and black in the light.

“Call off, child.”

“ _Today I teach you, Bondsman,”_ said Herc, ignoring him, taking a step forward.

“Wait until the hair grows even on your chin, child. Wait until your balls drop.”

Herc bared his teeth. He kicked forward, striking the table. The table crashed against the wall, shaking plates, knocking over food. lThe tea spilled, the cup rolling over in the saucer sending a wave of dregs and brown liquid over the white table cloth.

“ _I call you, Bondsman.”_

After a moment, Richard, who looked at first like he might lash out, stood straighter. His belly strained at the white top he wore. “ _You come to me of no clear mind, I see. You look like you’ve been touched by what I know not. You call, say true?”_

“ _I call.”_

“ _One hour,”_ said Richard, “ _in the southern courtyard.”_

Herc nodded once, letting his hands release for the first time since the house, fingernails having cut angry crescents into his palms.

“Your weapon?” asked Richard, in the Low Speech now.

“My own,” said Herc.

“At least you’re smart. Get out of my sight. Go. Go and meditate on the face of your father, much good it do ya.”

Pushing past Scott, Herc headed into the courtyard. He had a place to go. With only an hour to prepare, he couldn’t wait.

“You won’t call off?” asked Scott. “Are you mad?”

“Begone if you won’t be quiet,” said Herc, staring his brother down. “I’ll be walking from the east.”

Scott’s mouth went in a hard line. He turned, running off in the opposite direction. Probably to gather the others of their class.

Herc went instead to the armory. He had weapons there he could use, many he was proficient with. But Herc was a blunt instrument, most times. He fought with his fists and reflexes. He wasn’t like Stacker Pentecost, who was smarter. He wasn’t like Scott, who was resourceful. Nor indeed was he like the Gage Twins, who worked in perfect tandem. Herc wasn’t made for teamwork.

But to best Richard, he couldn’t use fists. Fists were nothing against the ironwood staff that Richard used to break arms and legs of the hopeful and hopeless.

The armory was cool and dim. Dust motes swirled in the light which filtered through bars from the outside. The guard paid no attention to Herc. Boys of the gun were welcome to come and look, welcome to take for their lessons.

He passed armor. He passed by swords and knives of all manners of cruelty. Instead he went to a wooden rack where row after row of quarterstaffs leaned, all made of ironwood. He reached out and touched one, feeling how smooth it was. Noting how bright the grain of the wood was in the light, when he turned it just right.

He lifted it, feeling how heavy it was.

He would best Richard with his own weapon. And he would walk East and claim his father’s guns.

Pressing the round tip to his forehead he closed his eyes and thought of Donovan Hansen, fallen Gunslinger of Gilead.

**

The mid-morning sun made the world hot. Dew evaporated from leaves and grass, the world became brighter. The day once full of promise was murky with the unknown. Herc didn’t mind. He’d get those guns or die trying.

They were his _father’s._ And his birthright.

He left the armory. Something in the way he looked made the guard give him pause. Herc’s eyes were remote and cold when they turned on him, regarded him a long moment.

“You go to the south courtyard?”

“I do.”

“Good luck.”

The guard was one of those that had never made their test. A man Herc would never become. They always seemed to take awkward jobs as they lived out their lives as not-men, as they abandoned the gun for servitude.

Herc turned away from him, hands tight around the staff.

Halfway there he was met with the others. Scott followed behind Pentecost, and the Gage twins flanked him. Herc wanted to ignore them, but Stacker walked straight towards him, blocking his path.

“Are. You. _Mad?”_

Pentecost was half a year his senior, and Herc knew it was only because Herc was going to his Call first that made him truly angry. Herc could give two shits what Stacker seemed to think of his plans. He knew not of his motivations.

He wasn’t even sure if Scott, who had been there, understood. Not that it truly mattered.

“I’m clear headed as I can be, Stacker,” he replied.

“Liar.”

They stared at each other like they might square off. Herc wouldn’t have minded it. Another to go through on his way to the courtyard. He’d not let anyone stop him.

But Stacker stood aside, sighing. “You’re mad. Whether you want to admit it or not, you’re mad.”

Herc kept walking.

The courtyard was not well kept. On the walls ivy grew thick, and brambles clung to the edges of the walls, the berries sweet but the thorns impassible. It was cleared in three spots. To the East, where Richard would enter. To the West, where Herc would enter. And to the West where Herc would go should he fail. Because those that Pulled too early, before they were ready, were doomed to exile in the West.

The others ran ahead, for a vantage point, and Herc stood in the shadows as the minutes ticked on.The third clear place was a perfect circle of white stones at the middle, the hard dirt churned up by many fighting feet. It was a place where boys spilled blood and became, by the grace of strength, men.

Richard appeared, dressed the same. He held a mighty ironwood staff that had broken jaws. Herc tried not to think of that, as Richard cleared his throat.

“ _Do ye come, Hercules, son of Donovan?”_

“ _I come.”_

“ _Do ye come as an Exile from your home?”_

“ _I do.”_

“ _Then step forth.”_

Herc walked from the shadows of the West, facing Richard. Facing the way that they would walk. Richard’s eyes were on the staff. No blade, no bolt, nor bah. No attempt at subtlety. Richard’s lips twitched into a half-formed smile before it disappeared.

So he knew, then.

“ _It starts. Come at me, and may you remember the face of your father.”_

Herc’s foot slid in the dust as he assumed his stance. His hands were clenching the staff hard, feeling the weight of it. The ball was raised, high over head. Ready.

Richard lifted his own and slammed it into the dirt. Somewhere far away, a rook was crying out on the upper walls. The world was silent but for that.

“Then come,” said Richard, before he stepped forward.

Herc bowed his head once.

He swung, expecting it to be deflected, and the dance began. A dance that was as deadly and dangerous as it was, in its own way, lovely.

Grunting, Herc parried, thrust. Narrowly avoided having his fingers broken from a well aimed blow. The vibrations rattled up through his muscles, but Herc was the largest, the strongest, of their class. He bore each hit, refused to give in.

A lucky blow at Richard’s ankle had the man hobbling, snarling. Herc saw stars as his feet were swept from under him. His head struck the ground hard and it was only one of the twins - Herc didn’t see - screaming at him that made him roll in time to avoid having his head smashed.

The blunt end of Richard’s staff struck the ground hard enough to make a rock explode. Herc got to his knees, raising his staff to deflect a back handed blow, and he thrust inwards, striking at the belly. It was like hitting a tree, trying to wind that man, he was so solid.

The end of Richard’s staff came around again. Herc jerked his head back, catching the edge of the blow on his chin, making his vision white a moment.

It wasn’t enough, though, as Herc raised up and swung. Deflected, until he came for a second strike. The blow was against the cheek, breaking bone, sending blood in an arc over the ground. Trainers blood.

With a cry that bordered on the blood thirsty, he struck another blow at Richard’s knee, softer this time, but hard enough to send him to the earth.

He knocked away the hand which held onto the staff, stabbing at him. The staff fell to the dirt, rattling away, and Herc tossed his own aside, leaping down and into the dirt for the staff.

He gripped the end, but Richard’s thick hands found his ankle, tugging, squeezing, twisting until it was hot with pain. Herc pulled at the staff, as Richard found his footing, punching down, striking Herc’s kidney’s.

“I’ll have ye, boy,” said Richard, hitting him again. Herc knew he’d be pissing blood the next morning, as he squeezed the end of the staff. If he couldn’t break the hold, he’d be going west.

“Ye _will not!”_ He tugged the staff down, rolling underneath of that girth, and now that they were equal again, in Herc’s eyes, he aimed his fist for that collapsing cheek.

Pain that Herc could hardly comprehend made Richard scream. A true scream of pain, as Herc brought his feet up and shoved hard on Richard’s chest, knocking him flat on the earth. WIth another swift maneuver he was up, holding the teacher’s staff in his hands.

He lifted it and slammed it into the dirt.

“ _I yield,”_ rasped out the Trainer, “ _I yield… gunslinger. And I smile.”_

The smile itself was bloody and had missing teeth. Herc knew he wouldn’t be able to stand, so he tossed the staff aside and turned to face his classmates. Boys, while he stood across as a man of the Gun.

“Fetch the nurse. Bid them hurry.”

Bruce and Trevin nodded once before turning to run, leaving Herc alone with Scott and Stacker.

He ignored them, their looks of awe. Herc hardly noticed that at some point he’d begun to bleed, but his white shirt was covered with it. With his or Richard’s blood.

He leaned down over the Trainer. “My birthright.”

“On my belt, Gunslinger,” said Richard. He grinned and spat blood. “I sleep happy. Of all the boys to call, I knew ye’d be first. And Ye’d be great.”

Herc undid his belt, slipping the keyring from them. There were many iron keys, but the one he sought had a rose inlaid upon it. It had a single twin, held by the leader of the Gunslingers. The leader of Gilead.

He took the key from the ring, dropping the rest in the dust. No, he would not take his father's guns yet. He was merely an apprentice. But as he held the key in his hand, crushing his fingers around it, he knew it would not be long.

The nurses came running, as Herc backed away from the body of his teacher.

ii.

Chuck had dismantled the gun, had laid each piece in its own spot, the touches on the steel reverent. Herc appreciated that.

But now his boy was staring at him in shock, like he hadn’t expected such a tale. Expected what a test of manhood really and truly meant for a man born to the gun. Herc wondered if he’d guessed yet, that Herc knew of Chuck’s own past far more than he’d let on so far.

Herc stirred the fire with his stick once or twice, surprised he’d spoken so much. Surprised he’d given more than the simple pieces. He’d given how he’d felt in almost intimate description.

“Your mouth will catch flies,” he said, and Chuck blinked, mouth snapping shut. “Now I’ll show you how to put her back together again.”

Chuck followed each motion. His hands were clever, moved deftly, and he picked up each action with ease. He never had to be shown twice, as the gun began to come together again in his fingers.

“So did you get your guns?”

“I did.”

“How long did it take?”

“A second test I might tell you some time,” said Herc, as Chuck laid down the complete weapon on the swatch of cloth. “One where my friends came, and some lay down their lives.”

“Your brother?”

“No. But the twins of which I spoke.”

“And did… Sherrif Pentecost join you?”

“He did. But don’t tell him of this yet.” Herc stood, walking to the tent. He had a metal pail full of what few things he’d found. Mostly meat, shot from deer that didn’t look too mutated, wrapped in herb leaves, as well as pokeberries “What we do here, it remains secret. Both of you and of Mako. You’re both worthy of the gun, and he doesn’t need to know I’ve chosen you.”

“Why?” asked Chuck, watching him.

“He’d disapprove.”

Chuck looked troubled, sitting back. “And you and I?”

“What of us?”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Chuck, heat coming into his voice. “I mean _us._ Something until recently you enjoyed.”

Herc gave him a look, which made Chuck shrink back slightly.

“There will be us… when I’ve made some decisions.”

“And those are?”

Herc left food on Chuck’s placemat of fabric. “Eat. And we’ll continue.”

“What if I want to know your reasons?”

Herc sighed. “They’re mine and mine alone.” The words were a lie, but he couldn’t tell Chuck just yet that he’d never lost his father to death.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

The air was hot and still enough that even the sounds of the thinny could be heard scratching and warbling their way over the land between to find them. Singing with it were cicadas and insects sawing in the grass and trees, still alive in the early-autumn heat and waiting for Reap to come for them and bring its frosts. 

Herc and Chuck both stood in a clearing facing several different lengths of birch logs that Herc had cut and attempted to pound into the ground for sturdiness.

Upon each was a carved wooden token, something crude that Herc had made with his knife resembling more a sharproot at reaptide than a human face. Each sat at a different height, seeming to mock Chuck with their distance and their difficulty. It was made all the worse that every shot counted. Bullets were few and far, far between, and Herc’s supply was large but limited.

It was a few weeks since they’d begun to train in the mornings, all day on Sundays. Chuck’s bar was suffering some, and he’d taken his fair share of abuse from his patrons on account of it, but he was keen to prove himself to Herc. To do anything to get the man back to him.The bruises he’d earned from altercations in his place as well as there in training were proof enough of that.

“Ye’ve done well enough with your slingshot,” Herc told him time and again. 

“But this is a gun,” said Chuck, feeling stupid and nervous.

“Aye. My brother’s gun too,” said Herc. “And you’ll learn to know it’s weight and how to use it properly. I’ve bullets. I’ve even learned the secret to forging more if need be, though I’ve not the tools to shape them.”

Chuck made a sound in his throat. The iron was heavy in his hand, weighing his arm down. He couldn’t imagine wielding two, let alone one. But Herc had already told him the other was promised to Mako, whose lessons had begun in the afternoons. Chuck longed to ask who was doing better, but knew Herc would not approve of the question and would never tell him.

Herc, who it turned out, was a harsh teacher. Like his stories of the man Richard, Herc taught in pain. Their fights were rough, but Chuck was learning there was more to hand-to-hand combat than throwing a punch. He wore bruises from fights with their quarter staves, a fat lip one day from a lucky hit from Herc’s fist.

But he wasn’t about to back down.

“Now,” said Herc, walking behind him. “Say it.”

Chuck blew out a breath. He’d said it enough that he didn’t have to think anymore. He repeated the creed, raising the gun. Holding himself steady. Focusing down the barrel like he was taught, sighting the first target. Behind him, Herc’s hands adjusted his stance, distracting Chuck in their own way.

“I kill with my heart.”

He fired, the sound echoing, silencing birdsong and even the warbling sound of the thinny for a moment. The bullet went wild, though, first grazing one of the birch logs and toppling it before striking a tree on the opposite end of the clearing with a bark splitting  _ crack. _

He dropped his arm, thinking about another bullet wasted as ache from the recoil crawled its way up his arm. One of too many precious things, wasted on a tree.

“Damn it,” he said, staring at the far off bullet hole.

“You’re not concentrating hard enough.”

Chuck’s jaw clenched and he set the gun down before heading to the log. “The fuck I’m not,” he said, lifting it, pushing it down into the circular hole Herc had made for it. “We’ve been at this for ages.”

Herc followed him. “You are capable,” he said, stooping to pick up the crude face and setting it on the flat of the log. “This is what you were meant for.”

He wondered about that. Why Herc always insisted that  _ this was what Chuck was born to. _ Sure, maybe he was suited to the job in some way. He liked to fight, and more often than not his targets were those who stood against his ideals of the greater good. But the way Herc spoke was like something else entirely. That Chuck was destined to be more than a whore. Like ka had picked an orphan to give him a second chance.

He had a feeling it had to do with Herc and his mysterious  _ reasons. _ Reasons which had left them as partners maybe, but not friends or lovers. It was like nothing had ever happened, like Herc was merely another one of those gods damned cowboys trying to be fatherly to Chuck while also trying to get onto Sasha’s good side. He could remember too well being three or four, trying to be polite to men with their shirts and jeans undone, while they smoked and Sasha lay on the bed behind them. 

“Well my aim’s a bit shite, isn’t it?” he said sarcastically.

He saw the angry look on Herc’s face and braced himself for some kind of blow. He was unsurprised, when Herc hooked his arm and gave him a shove towards the spot they were using for aiming, marked with their things.

“Stand true,” said Herc, and Chuck resisted the urge to slouch. The man walked around behind Chuck and leaned in, so his voice was low behind Chuck’s ear. “You lack motivation and drive. Let me provide it for you. You see the carving on your very left?”

Chuck nodded, shivering at how close Herc was. It was always like this. So close, but never close enough. Herc’s body was pressed along Chuck’s back. He could feel all of him. Gods, he ached for the gunslinger. 

Herc reached around and gave Chuck’s chest a pinch, missing his nipple but eliciting a sting of pain all the same. “That’s the man from the other night who remembered you from Sasha’s. Who tried to beat you in your own place, so he could get a fuck. Twisted your nipple and pushed you on the stairs, insisting you weren’t a barkeep. See the next one?”

“Yes.” Chuck’s jaw was clenched, as he remembered the ordeal. Fresh from practice, the man hadn’t wanted to take no for an answer.

“That’s the one that laughed at you, when the first one gave you the split lip you’re sporting. He did nothing to help you when you were on the ground of the bar. And the third, and fourth, are Cooney and Wilmoth. And the fifth… is the man who took you when you were young. The man who forces you to work for him. Who still thinks he owns you. The fifth is Chau.”

Chuck was breathing hard, staring at the little wooden idols, remembering. Thinking on his demons.

“Say the creed.”

Chuck swallowed hard, his hand coming up, holding the gun high. “I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye.

“I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind.

“I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.”

His finger squeezed the trigger, imagining the man who had tried to beat him dying in front of him. He was breathing hard as his hand moved, one after the other, turning each piece of wood into splinters. The last - imagining Chau’s face hovering over him in the dim light, his demons smile as Chuck had no choice but to open himself to him - burst satisfyingly with a clap that echoed throughout the forest like thunder.

He lowered his hand, breathing laboured. He was shaking, imagining everything that had happened to him.

“See?” said Herc, clapping him on the shoulder, “with the right motiva-”

Chuck turned, punching. Herc was lightning fast, deflecting his hand, but Chuck had dropped the gun and was bringing his other hand around for a swing. 

“ You bastard!” he was shouting. “You  _ bastard!” _

Herc knocked his other hand away, and Chuck’s face bloomed with pain as Herc struck him, knocking him onto his ass. Pain crawled its way up his back, jarring him as he landed on the ground.

“I gave you motivation. You refused to focus. You have forgotten the face of your father.”

“ FUCK my father!” shouted Chuck, shaking in the grass, furious. Jumping up with clenched fists. “Fuck him! He’s long dead, he’s  _ nothing.” _

Herc struck him again, a dull blow between his eyes, sending Chuck reeling. This was different than before. This was anger. This was even more than Herc acting out like his trainer Richard had. This was personal.

He bared his teeth at him. “What the fuck is your deal,  _ gunslinger-sai?” _

Instead of advancing, Herc looked taken aback. He looked down at his clenched fists, aghast. Like he couldn’t believe what he’d done.

“You think that, of your father?”

Chuck frowned, wiping blood away from his face. His head ached. “He’s dead, mate.”

“Do you think he was nothing?”

“No one’s ever told me shite about him. Why? Do you know him?”

His hands relaxed, and Herc blew out a breath. “Yes. Yes I knew him.”

“So you knew my mother.”

“I knew her too.” Herc paused, leaning over to soak a rag with water from a waterskin. He walked over, holding it out. “Put that on your forehead. And… I’m not the right man to tell you of him. If you want to know, seek out Stacker. I dare say he’d tell you everything you need to know.”

“ He won’t. I’ve asked,” said Chuck, taking the rag. His stomach felt hot.  _ Was my dad a gunslinger? _

“He will when you say Herc Hansen has sent you.”

ii.

Head aching and mind whirling, Chuck rode from camp out when dusk was approaching. He’d bought the horse from Stacker, who had no use for him. A kind gelding that Chuck had known for a few years, he was easier to ride and manage than the mare Mako had insisted he use.

He forsook the bar, despite his duties to go and clean up for the following day, and rode straight for Stacker’s home.

The place was full of memories from childhood. Growing up nearby at Sasha’s, he’d always been there when Mako had been adopted. Luna and Stacker were like his parents, though distant, the same way Sasha had been.

He paused at the edge of the road, contemplating the place. No lights shone in the windows, so it meant Chuck would have to wait.

He gigged the horse onward and around behind the house to the yard where Stacker’s horse Ronin was in his pen. Chuck opened the gate, and the gelding Tacit walked inside like he still lived there, nickering at his friend.

He closed the pen and went to the house, unsurprised to find it locked. Instead he went around to the front, sitting and waiting in a small rocker he remembered Mako and he fighting over. Any time now the preacher would let evening mass and the townsfolk would flood the streets. 

He had started to doze when he heard Stacker’s voice.

“What are you doing here, boy?” 

Gruff, as usual. Chuck’s eyes opened and he pushed up and out of the rocker. He was as tall as Stacker now, and it was an unusual sensation to stand side by side with him on the porch there. He rarely saw Stacker anymore, unless there was a problem.

“Herc Hansen sent me,” he said, watching the way Stacker’s face hardened.

“Come inside, then,” he said, taking out an old loop of brass keys.

Chuck followed, remembering some of Herc’s parting words as they entered the dim house.  _ Come back, if ye can stomach me. _

He had no idea what that meant, as he watched Stacker light oil lamps. The place was neat and orderly to the point of not being lived in, just like Chuck remembered. He felt small, like he and Mako were there to be chastised for something they’d done.

Stacker paused after lighting the last lamp. “So why did he send you?”

“He said he knew my father. He said you’d tell me.”

He turned, the crease between his eyes getting deeper. “He didn’t tell you himself?”

“No.”

Shaking his head, Stacker went to the easy chair near the door. He sat down, fingers folded together, and stared at Chuck.

“You’re a gunslinger too. So was my dad.”

“So he was.”

“So who was he? Tell me about him.”

“You already know him. He’s the reason you smell like gunpowder.”

It took a moment, to work through the statement. He wanted to say something, say anything. But when his mouth opened, no sound came out. He closed it again, jaw working in a grind, and Stacker merely watched him as if Chuck was a mildly interesting piece of artwork.

After a moment, his fingers curled and he leaned forward. 

“Your father is Hercules Hansen. Former gunslinger. A man I’d thought dead until he rode into Breach. Sit down boy, before you shake yourself apart.”

He hadn’t even been aware of the motion, but when Stacker mentioned it he realized he was trembling. The past few weeks memories were moving through him. Memories of kissing him, begging for him. Spreading his legs for him.

Weeks of fighting, of cold silences. 

“I told him,” said Chuck faintly, “that my mother’s name was Angie.”

“Is that when he left?”

Chuck nodded. It made sense now. But it didn’t ease the guilt and confusion in his heart. Despite the fight, the brutal teachings, he was still in love with the man. Still ached for his touch. Wanted to sleep out there by night with him and stretch out in his tent, moaning loud and having no one around to hear.

He was in love with his father.

He tried to breathe. Tried to draw in some kind of air, but it was like trying to force wind through a keyhole. He felt numb all over, because his father was  _ alive. _

“I have to go,” he said, his voice unrecognizable as he went for the door.

“You go home and to your bed, Chuck,” said Stacker his voice both commanding and warning. “Don’t ride to him tonight. The moon’s face is full and the Huntress doesn’t forgive.”

Chuck hardly heard him, as the door swung shut and he ran around the house, barely feeling his feet as they crunched over the dry, hard ground. He whistled for Tacit, opening the gate, and the gelding came to him, pushing his velvet soft nose against Chuck’s face.

“I hope you have it in you to go back,” said Chuck, putting his foot in the stirrup and swinging over him.

The bar wouldn’t be opening the next day. Chuck thought about it, in a detached kind of way, as he rode past, with Tacit at a run. He didn’t know when he’d be going back, if that was even his life now.

The country flew past him, as he made his way. The horse was huffing underneath of him, and Chuck held the reins, his eyes tearing up from the cool wind coming from the North. His own breath came in gasps, as if he were running too.

The night was different, strange. Above him, the moon grinned down at his progress like it knew what Chuck was being chased by.

Tacit was slowing down as they drew closer, his mouth foaming. He was breathing hard and heavy with exhaustion, and instead of feeling sorry for the horse he was annoyed. He was in a splay of country he wasn’t familiar with but travelled regardless.

There was a howl of some creature from the woods. Chuck knew that the animals out in the Edge were dangerous, and with the moon so full and high there was no telling what prowled out there in the woods, hungering and hunting.

Chuck tried to spurr Tacit on faster, but the horse came to a halt, hooves sliding through the dirt, throwing himself backwards in a rear.

Chuck swore, tumbling off of the horse and hitting the ground hard. He saw stars as the horse lunged and kept running, onwards towards Herc, leaving Chuck alone in the dirt behind him.

“TACIT!” he yelled, pushing to his hands, stumbling. Trying to make sense of where he was. Coming to the unpleasant conclusion that he didn’t really recognize that stretch of road.

There was a howl to his left, dangerous and high. It was answered by another, the sound in front of Chuck now, making his blood run cold in his veins. 

Above him, the Huntress Moon shone without mercy.

Desperate for a weapon, Chuck pulled the slingshot he carried out. He felt silly, but Herc had provided him with hard steel ball bearings, saying they were the sort young gunslingers used to practice their own aim before they were permitted to touch a gun.

He drew one, walking to the center of the clearing, his eyes moving between the tree trunks around him.

One by one, sets of eyes began to appear. Chuck didn’t wait for their bodies to follow, as he shot the closest pair. He was reciting the creed in his head, as whatever he had struck yowled with pain.

He turned to the next, raising the slingshot, as the eyes began to blink, as if unsure of him. He grinned at that, firing the next shot, satisfying in the second yelp.

“That’s right, you big bastards! This one fights back,” he called.

There was a crunch behind him and he turned, ready to fire. His heart dropping when he saw what was behind him.

Standing at probably seven feet tall, a wolf-like creature advanced on him. Its eyes were green and reflective, teeth yellowed and wet from saliva. He raised the sling shot but it surged forward, swinging a heavy hand at his own. 

Its claws tore through his clothes, blood bloomed up from deep wounds on the back of his arm as the ball went wild and he dropped his only weapon.

He was swearing as he backed away from the nightmare vision. It had too much intelligence, too much cruelty, in its eyes. But there were howls, snarls, now at all sides as the pack began to encroach around him.

This was it then. Of all the ways to die, of all the cruel tricks  _ ka _ had to play, this was the worst. A stupid orphan whore dying alone, ignoring the warnings of the men in his life.

The leader lunged, it’s teeth snapping scant inches from his arm. Behind him another lunged, and he felt the furry, powerful body collide with him, rolling him off his footing and making him hit the ground. Another bit at his boot, teeth sinking and shaking.

He felt the  _ poppoppop  _ of teeth sinking into his shoulder, each tooth penetrating his skin.

Chuck screamed, as thunder exploded all around him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUNDUNDUNNNNNNNNNNNNN
> 
> :) still with me? Promise Herc and Chuck will talk sooner or later...


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay okay I know it's short, but the next one's probably going to be... really really long.

i.

Chuck woke up with an unpleasant sensation, like he was being moved. His stomach was pressed upwards to his spine, his hands, feet and head heavy with blood like he was dangling. He was moving along, bouncing, as if riding. Herc was there, looking at him. Even in the dark his eyes were piercing, and Chuck’s eyes closed as he thought of them.

He woke again when he was being moved. He fell into Herc’s arms with a whimper of pain, and he felt lips on his own, silencing the sound before he was half carried, half dragged across the ground. He didn’t register the sight, but he knew the scents.

He was laying down, smelling campfire, smelling fur, smelling sheets. His eyes opened again to see Herc with a knife. He opened his mouth to ask what was happening, but Herc’s rough fingers shushed him.

“Sleep.”

“You’re a bastard, for not telling me,” said Chuck, watching as Herc cut his shirt open. “A bastard.”

“I had my reasons,” said Herc. “Sleep.”

“Fuck you.”

“Sleep, Charlie.”

The words tugged in a memory so deep Chuck didn’t even know he had it. He was a little boy who was to face the dark of night alone, but his father had come in to tuck him in. “I love you,” Chuck thought he said, choking some, before his eyes rolled back and the dark crept back in.

It was in and out. Sometimes pain brought him out, and he yelled, sometimes it was nothing at all. Once it was to the sharp scent of alcohol and a burning hot flash of pain. He saw Herc with a needle and thread. Another he lifted his head once to see Herc at the mouth of the tent, drawing in the dust with a bullet.

The last time, when he came awake with a scream as the wolves bore down on him in sleep, Herc was there. The light was gone, it was just them in the darkness, and his hand came up. Herc’s mouth found his and Chuck reached up with painful movements to curl his fingers in Herc’s hair.

They both knew what the other was, but they still moved in the dark together, tongues pushing together. Chuck hated him and loved him, wished he could stop and tell Herc how much he loathed him for hiding it for so long.

Instead he pulled away with a gasp, tilting his head back to let Herc kiss his neck. His legs spread and Herc came between them, rocking his own hips.

He knew better than to ask if they should stop, as they both started moving together frantically, two lovers held apart for too long.

Herc kissed down his body, undressing him completely. The tent was hot with the outside air, with their need, and when he felt Herc’s mouth on him he almost came entirely undone. Despite the pain that happened as he flexed, twisting on the furs, he felt himself elevating under his father’s touch.

“Herc, please - please-” he said, his fingers pushing through short hair. He came with a cry, shooting into Herc’s mouth. Unravelling with the pleasure.

His father moved over him, kissing him. Chuck tasted his own bitterness on Herc’s tongue as he reached out. Felt Herc roll his hips when he found his father’s member and squeezed. Panting, he reached down his trousers and really felt him, drawing his hand back and forth in time with Herc’s thrusts.

When Herc shuddered, spilling over Chuck’s fingers, Chuck let his aching arm drop. Herc collapsed beside him, and the two of them kept kissing for a moment, desperate, needy for each other.

“We’re damned,” said Herc.

“We already were,” he replied, when he felt himself dropping away for the last time.

ii.

Since Walter O’Dim had come to Breach, Newt was a wraith in Chau’s domain. He poured away in his study, locked from the outside world. He had things to do. Being Chau’s advisor, a man who was meant to communicate between Broadcloak and the small players in Farson’s game, it wasn’t becoming to get so lost in an object.

But all that was forgotten, in the light of the orb he was given. Its tantalizing whispers and secrets creeping and crawling their way into his mind, pushing through the cracks of his brain like tentacles.

He curled over the orb, tilting his head this way and that. It pulsed an unnatural blue, the blue of things lost forever to deep waters, the blue of magic. Inside it he watched people. Any person he could think of.

Their pasts opened up to him, their secrets hissed and whispered. The mayor, he learned, had murdered another boy when he was but ten, pushing him into the well. He’d claimed it was an accident, while the town mourned.

No one in Breach had a dirty secret that wasn’t Newt’s. From the gay young man with father issues that Chau was so taken of, to the Sheriff, bastion of good. He grinned, watching the man himself fuck his sister Luna, two broken teenagers escaped of Gilead.

Newt was becoming a god, bit by bit. A god of the knowledge the town held. He still had so much to learn, so much information to sort through. He’d be the master then, even if he answered to Hannibal Chau, the man whose name was not his own.

Aroused, on the edge of his seat, he watched as Luna and Stacker Pentecost defiled each other. It was power, to know the man who’d lock him away had such a dirty, illegal secret.

The door opened, then, as Newt squirmed on the chair, bent over the pulsing blue orb. He yelped, the orb going opaque in his shock.

“No word?” asked Chau, coming into Newt’s room without a by-your-leave, jarring the man.

With a wave of his hand, the blue light that had been pulsing through the room was lost underneath of a shawl of fabric.

“None,” said Newt, turning, trying to hide his annoyance. At Chau’s side, of course, was Onibaba. No woman scared him more. He pushed his glasses up on his forehead. “Not from the Good Man.”

“From who then?”

Newt walked to the curtained window and opened it. With a caw, a massive raven landed on the sill, scratching the wood with its talons. Newt stroked her feathers, before reaching next to her to pick up a scroll.

“Marten Broadcloak sends word to move the shipment,” he said. “He’s concerned.”

“Concerned of what?”

“A man whose name I cannot read,” said Newt, sounding frustrated. “I tried.” He waved his hand to the corner. What once was a billy-bumbler was now a corpse, its entrails spread in the bathtub. “Marten cannot read them either. Only that their purpose is vengeance.”

“So a gunslinger.”

“Probably. The line of Eld has ways of hiding.” Newt nervously smoothed his cloak again, as Chau walked further into the room. He didn’t like intruders into his space. Not even the Kaiju, the fascinating collection of taheen, can-toi and humans that Chau had collected. “Is that all?”

“No,” said Chau. “What were you doing with the bauble Walter O’Dim brought?”

Newt flinched, as Chau went to it and flicked the fabric aside. But under Hannibal Chau’s hands, the glass went dark.

He sighed in relief. The Blue was _his._

“It’s temperamental,” he said, walking over, covering it with the cloth. “Very complicated.”

“And what does it say?”

Newt swallowed. “I’ll need a target.” A lie, of course. The orb showed what it wanted to show, and Newt’s power couldn’t yet command it or its direction.

Chau smiled at that. It was a devil’s smile, something Newt couldn’t trust. Didn’t want to trust.

“How about my boy?”

Newt’s adam's apple bobbed in a gulp. “I’ve read him.”

“And?”

“And he’s foggy. His father was a gunslinger? The boy is of Eld. But his mother is not. There was a man at his tavern. A man he’s fallen in love with.”

“What do they look like?”

“Red-headed, strong. He’s moved on from town.”

“Is that all?”

“I’ll learn more,” said Newt, sensing jealousy in Chau’s voice. And with the jealousy would come danger, of pain or death, depending his mood. “I swear it.”

“Good. Or I’ll have someone else take care of your bauble.”

He left a moment later. The woman Onibaba, covered with tattoos, paused at the door and bowed once before she let it creak shut behind her, leaving Newt alone in the dim, dusty light of his study.

Without hesitation, Newt went back to the orb to see what next it would show him.

iii.

The morning sun crept through the flap of the tent, waking Herc. Birdsong came next, the tones of the thinny following. Like every day he heard it, he winced, giving his head a shake, and he got up.

There was no unpleasant revelation. Herc glanced at Chuck’s battered, sleeping form and sighed before he buckled his trousers, pulled on his boots, and went outside.

It was with a moment of trepidation that he stepped over the runes he’d scribbled into the dirt, to protect against whatever might be roaming around.

First he checked Eureka, and was surprised to find Tacit standing next to her. The gelding nickered softly when he approached, and he stroked his face before untethering Eureka. “Good boy,” he murmured, as the two horses walked towards a patch of grass to eat.

He started a fire, set water boiling. Washed in the cold stream he’d camped beside, feeling his arms prickle up with gooseflesh as he got rid of the sweat, blood and traces of his and Chuck’s night together.

He was partially through cooking breakfast when he heard the boy finally stirring. WIth a bit of nervousness, he turned to watch as Chuck crawled, each movement making the boy wince with pain.

When Chuck was finally standing Herc looked him up and down. He was made of tough stuff, that boy.

“What happened last night?” he asked, in lieu of greeting, as he sat down on his usual log.

“I killed a lot of skin-walkers, that’s what,” said Herc. “A whole pack, probably.”

“What’s a skin-walker?”

“Man who changes shape under the moon. Rare.You probably would call them a werewolf,” he said, and Chuck shuddered in response. Herc nodded. “They were probably holed up in that town not far from here, hiding. They’re like a demon. Legend says if you’re bit by one you become one, but fear not. It’s just a legend.”

Chuck shuddered. Finally, a proper response out of the boy. “So they’re why people go missing full moon?”

“Probably,” he said. “They should have gone for horsemeat than human, but I’m afraid creatures like them can’t resist.”

“How did you find me?”

“I was hunting when I heard the howls and the horse scream. I came just in time it seemed.” He dished out beans into beaten up metal cups. He handed a cup over to Chuck.

They ate in silence. When Herc was sure that Chuck wasn’t going to bring up what he’d done to him, he cleared his throat, setting aside his cup of food.

“We can start train-”

“Fuck you,” said Chuck. Herc knew he deserved no less than that. “You owe me an apology.”

Herc grunted. “What do you want me to say?”

“I’m sorry, for starters. For being a twat. For second, sorry for ignoring me for weeks without explanation. For third, sorry for making someone else do your damned dirty work.”

He stirred the pot of beans, contemplating ignoring him. But there was truth in everything that Chuck said. “I’m sorry.”

“For?”

“Not doing what I should. It started a long time ago, my sins. Before I came to Breach.”

“I’ve got time,” said Chuck, his voice growing softer.

Herc closed his eyes. “And what would you hear of?”

“The beginning.”

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gahhhhhhhhhhhhh this took so long and I apologize to anyone who's missed it! Also if it feels rushed, I'm sorry for that too. It could have been chapters long, tbh.
> 
> Also, if anyone is familiar with the fourth book in the series, the story in general does draw quite heavily from it, not just this chapter. 
> 
> And also-also, there's het stuff in here. Chuck had to get born somehow. So yeah. There's that. 
> 
> AND some ages got played with. I'm adjusting the other chapters, but just an FYI Herc got de-aged a little to make certain things fit..

i.

They rode out in the morning. Herc could remember that well enough, the scent of the air as they made their way past the wineries, through orchards. Their horses were fresh, rubbed down. Each of them dressed for riding, carrying their burdens. Herc’s greatest burden stashed away under the blankets of his roll to be hidden from view. Though it wasn’t on him it was like a weight regardless, one he thought he wouldn’t shed until he was truly worthy of his father’s guns. He had no idea yet that the weight of the iron would be with him until he died, whenever that was.

There were five boys chosen that rode to the west, towards their quest. Herc was a plain boy, he hated romantic words like _quest._ To him it was a job. To go to Veritas and do what his father could not. He was a lone man among boys, and he was to be their guide - their bondsman - to manhood.

It was daunting, but he lead them anyway. For the first few days it was an adventure. Travelling the open road, hunting, gathering, making camp. Teaching his little brother how better to aim. He was fourteen, too young to be on any such journey, but the line of Eld was dying and people were few and far between. Herc had insisted he try, and despite his mother’s grievings the Gunslingers which lead them had agreed.

Whatever came would be their test of manhood. They were ka-tet, and they would be until the job was completed. Until they were men, and moved on, come whatever may.

“Once upon a time I envisioned you leading me,” said Herc, on a night they had stopped. The Gage Twins, Bruce and Trevin, were engaged in friendly sparring with Scott behind them. Herc and Stacker Pentecost looked to the horizon.

Stacker looked at him. “My father might have outranked yours, but that’s no guarantee of leadership.”

“Still, you’re the level headed one, Stacks.”

“Your anger is a trigger we might need pulled.”

It felt like invincibility, standing there and looking at the mountains in the distance. Herc knew he hadn’t much hope of coming out alive when his father hadn’t. He knew he shouldn’t have his brother with him. Who was to watch their mother, if Scott passed on before ever touching the sacred, ceremonial guns that were promised to him?

Herc merely clapped Stacker on the shoulder and turned away, for his tent. For the darkness that all boys of the gun must face alone.

Veritas was in ugly country. It was a small barony that made their money with what iron ore and coal they could take from the mountains, its towns dotted about against slopes and standing up to landslides, hard rain's, deep winters.

The boys road past ruins of towns filled with granite, the cruel mountains taking and never giving back. They passed others were children stared at them with grime around their open mouths and dust in their hair, towns where men and women ignored them and pretended they didn’t exist. Places with names like Tombstone and Bulwark, where their horses and their names were all unacceptable because they were strangers.

ii.

The capital of Veritas was called Ore Town, perhaps lacking in creativity but it was the most profitable town in the barony. It exported ore and coal to Gilead, along with a very rare and valuable trade - gunpowder. It sat in the shade of Ash Ridge, nestled against the roots of the mountain. The road that lead to it was next to an old, mostly disused rail track. The only traffic it saw was moving ore and coal to Gilead. Otherwise, everything was pulled by oxen. It was a hard place, the mountain riddled with old mine shafts and factories, tipples churning coal out from the seams and into waiting rail cars.

The air was thick, dusty, the town noisy with industry. Little seemed to grow there, and the stream was no good, filled with minerals and tough to drink. All the town had was a spring not far away where water was hauled from, earthy tasting but free of poison.

Electric lights still glimmered at night, and it looked like a jewel in a rusty setting as Angela Hardisty picked her way down the rocks. She was widely considered a witch, despite being a member of the most reputable house in the town. If the preacher-man had his way, she’d likely be cast out or dead, but so far her father assured the town her panderings were merely girlish flights of fancies. It was frustrating sometimes, the way the town treated her just because she loved to wander.

Basket full of herbs she found on the mountain, and flowers to press and to dry for popuri, she found her way to her usual path that ran by the river. It flowed swift and black as she walked alongside of it, eyes wary for unusual stones or valerian growing between rocks. Her mother used it as a sleep-aid when the sounds of the mines were too loud, so they usually were running out of stock.

As she walked she sang, her voice high and clear along with the rushing of the water over the rocks. “ _My gift is my song and this one’s for you…”_

There was a small bridge of stones and long logs, and she made her way across, balancing carefully, holding her basket to her chest with one hand, the other reaching away from her body as she walked.

“ _And you can tell everyone that this is your song,”_ she continued, stepping down to the other side. She didn’t notice the shadow leaning against the rock and crouched, spotting thyme in the moonlight. “ _It may be quite simple but now that it’s done…”_

“Your voice is beautiful.”

She shrieked, dropping her basket, and whirled, at last spotting the figure a few feet away from her. He looked to be about her age, maybe younger, with clear eyes and a dusting of hair around his chin. It was hard to make out in the dim light, but he looked handsome enough.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said. His voice was deep already, he sounded like a man. “I was enjoying listening. I haven’t heard that song since I was a young boy.”

“Are you so old?” she asked, picking up her basket and standing, brushing her skirt off.

“As old as you,” he said.

“So seventeen summers.”

He blanched a moment. “Fifteen.”

“A child,” she teased.

He bristled a little, standing up straighter. He was taller than her, and wide, like muscle would be heavy on his frame when he was older. Still, though, it was amusing to watch him posture. She wondered who he was.

“I know most of the boys around here. Are you new?”

“I am, lady-sai, I come from far away. We’re staying up at Governor Hardisty’s, until lodging can be made.”

She raised her eyebrows, curious about this newcomer. Her father had said nothing of this boy coming, nor of any others. “We?”

“Myself and my companions. Might I walk with you?”

She hesitated a moment before nodding. “You may. Where are your companions now?”

He fell into step with her, keeping up easily. She felt self conscious in her silly dress, an older, skimpier thing she wore that she wasn’t afraid of ripping when she climbed, and she imagined his eyes on her even though he was looking straight ahead. She could see now, in the bright moonlight, his eyes were probably blue or grey.

“We’re camping on a ridge just outside of town, north-a-ways, with a crown of pines,” he said.

“Oh. Bleak Ridge. Be careful there, by nights. They say demons roam.”

“We’ll be safe,” he said mildly.

They descended into a patch of trees, the spruce turning everything black. But she knew the way quite well, and he stepped behind her. He had a sure step, secure in his walk, and didn’t falter or look nervous by the way they went.

“So what brings you to Ore Town?” she asked, making her way among the clinging roots of trees and over the carpet of needles.

Before he answered she slipped on a root, and his hand was gentle as it steadied her, before she could fall far. “We come on errand of Gilead,” he said softly, “to inspect the surrounding area and the productions.”

She turned in the dark to try to see him better, but now he really was a shadow. She felt very alone with him in that second. A stranger from _Gilead._ Here, in their barony. She wondered for a brief moment if this boy was a gunslinger before dismissing it. He was only fifteen.

“Say you true?” she asked.

He chuckled softly in the dark. “I do.”

Feeling vulnerable, she turned and started to walk again. She didn’t hear a sound, and when she left the trees she expected him to be left behind, but there he was right there beside her when they were back in the moonlight.

The edge of town was a ways off when she stopped again. She’d see him the next night, in all likelihood, if they were coming to stay at their town. And she wasn’t sure what to say to him, now that they’d have to part, if he wanted to get back to his camp.

She paused, turning to look back at him. “Not given to many words are you?”

“Only when I need to be,” he said. “I don’t talk much. I leave it to others.”

Angela smiled, looking down a moment. “Well thank-you for escorting me.”

“I couldn’t let a lass like you walk unaccompanied.”

She shook her head, laughing. “I’m two years your senior, and I’ve walked the path many times.”

“Even so,” he said.

They looked into each other’s eyes a moment. Herc reached up and brushed a strand of her hair back before he seemed to remember himself and looked away, dropping his hand. Despite looking close to a man he was still very much a boy, and as Angela blushed she felt herself drawn to him.

There was something safe about him.

“I must be taking my leave of you now,” she said.

He looked put out. “I don’t yet know your name.”

“Ye’ll learn it soon,” she said softly. “And I ask, when next we meet… pretend like this never happened.”

She leaned in and kissed him. She didn’t know why, but it seemed like the thing to do, as she pressed against him. The stubble around his mouth was rough but his lips were soft.

She rocked backwards on her ankles. He looked shocked, his mouth open, eyes wide in the light. She might have laughed, if it weren’t for the pleasant tingling in her stomach.

“Good-night,” she said, “and thank ye for accompanying me.” She gave him a little bow, before turning and whisking off among the streets and away from the boy of Gilead, wondering what had caused her to act this way to a boy she didn’t know.

iii.

The next day Governor Hardisty accepted five boys of Gilead into his home for the night. They arrived mid-morning, explaining themselves. The story was that they had disgraced their fathers homes and were sent on an errand as penance for what they had done. Governor Hardisty accepted them, saying any of Gilead were most welcome in his home.

The deception of his words was thinly veiled, enough that even Herc, who considered himself a simple man, could pick up on it. So he merely nodded, thanked him, and wondered if the man was privy to the deceptions that were rumoured back in Gilead.

They spent the morning exploring Ore Town with the Governor and one of his men, introducing themselves to the sheriff and others of note, such as councilmen and a single, powerful rancher who kept horse and oxen and cattle in the only tendable fields. Herc’s eyes sought for the girl he supposed a server, with her faded, ripped dress and basket of herbs, but he didn’t see her.

The last man they met while they were breaking bread with the rancher, Garreth Abarca. His wife had served them fresh baked bread and jerky and sweet tea, and they discussed how the cattle were doing - the mutie genes breading out, leaving clean stock - when a knock came at the door.

Herc turned to watch Abarca go to the door, chewing stilled. He was suspicious of everyone, and didn’t trust the wide smiles they were given. The warm welcomes.

When the door opened a massive man was framed there in a red suit, brown hair neatly brushed back, dark glasses on his eyes, beard trimmed. His presence was impressive, but Herc’s face didn’t change as he ducked through the door and stood surveying the party of people.

“I hear tell you all are from Gilead on penance,” he said by way of greeting, making Herc wonder about him all the more. These hid their hate or suspicion behind their smiles, but he didn’t seem to think hiding was necessary as he surveyed them with apparent dislike.

Herc looked at Stacker, who was responsible for speaking. Herc knew he wasn’t eloquent enough, and even though he was technically the leader, Stacker was always going to be the more responsible choice.

“We’ve been sent so, yes,” he said, rising from his seat. “My name is Alan Lynah, this,” he gestured to Herc, “is Liam Owens, and his brother Michael. These are John and Richard Newhall.”

“Well met,” said the man. “My name is Hannibal Chau.”

 _An unusual name,_ Herc thought, not realizing yet he’d met the man who’d burn him later, from the inside and out. He stared at those dark glasses and thought that their eyes met. That this Hannibal Chau might sense who Herc was, and Herc’s suspicions that he’d met someone formidable.

“Well met indeed, sai,” said Stacker with a bow, a fist pressed to his forehead.

The Governor stood, with a small nod at Stacker, who took his place back at the table. “Hannibal Chau has recently taken over several of the mining operations, notably in the export and imports of our ore and our food from Gilead.”

Herc nodded at him once. He could see the target on the man. It was him he wanted.

“He’ll be joining us as well tonight,” said Hardisty, sitting again.

“Indeed,” said Chau, walking in like he owned the place. Herc could see deference there, as they made room for him at the table. “I’m sure we’ll all be fast friends. Anything, for ones of Gilead.”

 _Liar,_ thought Herc.

iv.

The gala that night was festive. Herc admired the electric lights, wondering where the power came from. It reminded him of the castle in Gilead, during the midsummer night party, watching everyone get together. The decadence of course was something more in their home, but it was comforting all the same. Something familiar.

They dressed their best, what clothes were safe from the ride. Herc himself wore an open throated white shirt tucked into dark jeans, washing himself carefully, wondering if he’d see the serving girl whose name he didn’t know. Just the thought of her made his heart beat faster.

She’d been such a beautiful thing. Long hair that appeared almost white in the moonlight. He knew it was probably the colour of cornsilk, hanging down her back in lovely waves. Her eyes were bright, beautiful, even in the dark, and he longed to see them by day, wondering if they were green or blue. In the night they’d sparkled like jewels, and he still remembered how they’d looked after she’d kissed him.

So earnest, so gorgeous.

“You look preoccupied,” said Stacker, who looked very much in charge all in black.

“It’s nothing,” lied Herc. He often wanted to confide in him. Ask Stacker if he’d ever kissed or lain with a woman, but it didn’t seem right. He wanted to be first, but he also didn’t want to appear without knowledge. He, after all, was the only man in the group, even if it was merely by test.

They headed down to the hall, Scott at one side, Stacker at the other. Bruce and Trevin followed, each talking in low tones. Everyone was nervous. They weren’t yet nobility, they were merely boys. High bred, perhaps, but still boys.

The lady of the house greeted them at the bottom of the stairs. Herc’s eyes dipped to look at the jewelry she wore, putting him in mind of his mother, when she and his father had gone into the castle for parties like this.

“My name is Cassia,” she said, with a slight bow, and lead them into the gathering. She gestured at a girl to her right, who was looking away at the main doors. Her hair was intricately braided, her gown a deep blue silk, the shoulders low. “This is my daughter, Angela.”

Herc felt his heart go still as she turned at the sound of her name, a bright smile on her face that faltered only a moment to see Herc. They beheld each other a moment, before Herc sank down in a bow, fist to his forehead, foot extended. “Pleased to meet you both, sai-Hardisty.”

She curtsied to them all, after a round of introductions. She looked stunning, with sapphires at her throat and dangling from her ears. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”

They were lead away by Cassia, Herc constantly looking for reassurance that his serving girl was truly who she said. Herc couldn’t stop thinking on her pale green eyes, and so almost missed many introductions.

“She’s a beauty,” said Bruce, when they were lingering with their drinks, staring at the mingling people.

“She is,” agreed Herc.

He watched as Hannibal Chau, who had been at the Governor’s side all night, went to Angela and kissed her hand. She blushed, though looking slightly uncomfortable at him. Jealousy burned in his heart a moment, though it had no place there.

“Do you suppose she is promised him?”

Herc blinked. “He’s quite old for her.”

“A match of convenience, perhaps,” said Bruce, “or of politics.”

Herc was glad he hadn’t his gun. His mistrust of Chau went deep, though nothing had been _proven_ yet, it was merely his gut. “Politics, I’d wager.”

She met his eyes across the room, and Herc’s heart ached.

v.

The inspections of Ore Town went on for a month before anything truly of note happened. By day they counted, inspected, learned of their processes. Pitched in hard labour, as was noted by a letter from Stacker’s ‘father.’ They were perhaps a town joke, but Herc didn’t mind. By nights they were left well enough alone, staying in a small camp off of Garreth Abarca’s land, and he investigated what he could, watching movements of the mine from a ridge, wondering why they were working late into the night.

He didn’t meet Angela again until they happened upon each other once more on the mountain side. It was twilight then, and she was wearing a working girl's dress once more as she walked. He observed her from an outcropping of rock, eyes on the way her pale green dress practically glowed, and he thought it might match her eyes.

Her voice carried rich and clear to him, and he knew he was in love, even if it was a fool's love. A boyish fancy, maybe. But she was a good woman from what he’d seen in the last month. A caring one, a just one, even if she was promised of Chau.

She slipped a moment later on a slippery rock over a small mountain stream. He was up in a flash, turning to the path so he might go to her aid.

She was sitting on a rock, massaging her ankle, when he came upon her, puffing a little for breath and red in the cheeks. “Are you alright?”

She looked up at him, a smile at once playing on her lips, before she shrugged her delicate shoulders. “I was clumsy.”

It was a special sort of ache, to be near her again, especially since learning she truly was promised of Chau. He wondered what she made of it, if she accepted it, or if she’d chosen it herself. He doubted the latter - she’d never shown much warmth around them. But now Herc could clearly see the fire opal on her left ring finger.

“Were you watching me again?” she asked, brushing her hair back from her face, looking amused.

“I wasn’t searching for you,” he said, sitting with her now. “Merely wandering, when I saw you fall. I was up there,” he pointed to a higher ridge, “and I heard your voice.”

“So you were watching by chance. Fair enough. I’ve not seen enough of you around town. I hear you’re always working.”

So she’d been looking for him too? It made his heart beat a little faster, but he had to remind himself, she was a promised woman, no matter how much he despised the man. “I’ve not seen enough of you either, but I worry it wouldn’t be proper of me to see you.”

“I can see whom I like,” she said, with a toss of her hair.

That made Herc smile. “Was it your choice? To wear his ring, I mean. If it’s not prying.”

“It’s prying,” she replied. “My business is my own. As is yours, I’m sure, Liam Owens.”

 _But my heart is yours,_ thought Herc, feeling stupid with his flight of romanticism. He wasn’t romantic, but something about Angela stirred him, and he’d only spoken with her a few times.

They spent the evening together however. When her ankle felt better he roamed the slopes with her, learning about the various herbs and things she gathered. He made her a small crown of flowers for her hair, which made her laugh. He thought her like one of those fabled tree-women, who wandered but made their home in the roots and boughs of the strongest trees.

It was nice to spend time away from the others, though Stacker would undoubtedly grow upset. At some point though, their wanderings came closer to the mines. He paused, not far from his usual vantage point, listening to the sounds.

“Are ye loyal?” he asked her suddenly, when she was telling him about the various uses of a plant.

She paused at the interruption before nodding. “I am.”

“Is your father?”

She didn’t reply, merely stared towards the mines.

“Angela?”

“I think so,” she said. “But I’m not sure. Is that why you’re here? It’s not really penance, is it?”

He looked at her, wondering what to say. Knowing his silence spoke much regardless.

She nodded. “I thought as much. I found something. After I became betrothed to Mr. Chau, there were… documents, in my father’s study.”

“Paper?” he was surprised there was much to go around here.

She nodded. “I can read, but not well. I found a letter, telling of men moving to the Southridge Mine. But that mine has been depleted for some time, Liam. After the last collapse, they gave it up. That was six years hence.”

“Perhaps they move to mine it again?”

“Perhaps… but  he’s been acting so strangely. I’m sorry, it’s unlike me to talk like this, and wicked of me to speak of my father so to a stranger. But I worry. Especially since Chau moved to town. Things have… changed. But haven’t. Do ye ken?”

“I do.” He wondered why she was telling him all this, when he was a stranger to her. “I won’t break your confidence.”

“Not to your friends? Aren’t they here with you?”

“They are. But I’ll hold peace for now.”

“Thank-you.”

Night had fallen again, and they were in the darkness together. She looked at him in earnest, and leaned in to kiss him again. He gasped, pressing back into the kiss this time, feeling his heart pound.

She didn’t pull away until he reached up to cup her face. Then she stepped back, looking aghast. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“But you did,” he replied, wanting to step in again.

“I don’t know why. I’m proven honest, and I’m promised to Chau. We’re to wed in a few months.” She swallowed hard. “You fluster me.”

She looked up at the moon, brushing her hair back, before she shook her head, as if deciding on something. “I must be going back, Liam. And I think it’s best I go alone.”

He nodded. He was still breathless, and still drawn to her, but she was wiser than he at least.

vi.

He didn’t see her again for a week, but it seemed neither of them could be kept from the slopes of the mountain. It wasn’t long before he found her, and sang a few bars of ‘Careless Love’ for her before appearing in the path, with an offering of flowers that she accepted.

Night time was for them. They wandered far under the Huntress moon together, finding new paths and springs, getting to know one another. They’d even found a small cave they declared their own on the south end of town, shallow and dry. Herc told her what he could of his life, but if he was to remain Liam he knew he must hold back.

They were talking about a festival the town had had a few days ago when they were climbing trees together. He heaved himself up easily onto a branch with nought but his arms, and she marveled at his strength.

“I’m named for it,” he said without thinking, before twisting to hang from his legs.

“Liam doesn’t mean strength,” laughed Angela. “At least, not out here.”

He sighed, rocking back and forth. “Apologies.”

She leaned from her branch and kissed him, and his legs tightened to keep from falling as his heart beat raised.

She pulled away, looking pleased with herself, and swung her legs, looking out over the other trees.

“Do you care for me?” asked Herc, his voice soft.

“I think you know that well enough,” said Angela.

Slowly he righted himself until he was sitting with her on her branch. Their legs dangled together, and they watched the sunset slowly fade, the colours brilliant from the smog of the factories.

“What if I wasn’t Liam Owens?” he asked, looking at her.

Her mouth quirked. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Is it?”

He shook his head.

“Kiss me and tell me then,” she said, and he smiled at that, leaning in. He kept it gentle and slow, and she moaned softly for him when he reached up to stroke her chin. Her skin felt so very hot from her blush, and he wanted to pull her closer.

He kissed his way to her ear, making her shiver and gasp, and he cupped her neck. “Hercules Hansen,” he said softly.

She stiffened at that, pulling away. Her eyes were still needy, but afraid now. “Speak you true?”

“I do.”

“Then your father was one of the Gunslingers who last rode through. Donovan Hansen. He was red haired, like you, a fair man.”

He nodded.

“He died.”

“He did.”

“Are you here for revenge?”

“No,” he said, only half-meaning it. If he had the chance to kill the man who killed his father, he would. “So he reached Ore Town. Does your father have business in Terth?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a few days ride from here.” She bit her lip. “No one knows how he died.”

“Just that he did, and the others left.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. It hurt to think of his father. It was why he was here now, but he didn’t say anything about it.

“So none of ye are who you say?” she asked.

“I think it’s safer,” he said.

“I think so too, Hercules.” She paused. “That’s too long.”

“Most call me Herc.”

She shook her head. “I think I’ll call you ‘Le. That way no one will see it as so very different from Liam.”

He smiled, leaning in again. And this time her kiss opened to him in a desperate way.

vii.

Living with the knowledge of their emotional, and somewhat physical, affair was hard. Keeping it from the others harder. They were used to Herc going at long lengths after the days work, but soon he found excuses to leave during it. Places to see, he claimed. In reality he was stealing moments with Angela.

Kisses in the shadows, kisses that were growing deeper.

“Le,” she’d say breathlessly in his ear, as he kissed her neck, his hands climbing up her skirt. She moaned when his fingers traced the inside of her thighs, not daring to go further.

Until one day they couldn’t stop. A night on the mountainside, when Angela demanded he love her the way he claimed. “Honesty and all it’s meanings be damned,” she’d said, “love me like you do, ‘Le. Because I love you.”

He knew he could never leave her behind after that, when they took each other’s honesty that night. He held her so gently as he pushed inside of her, murmuring how much he loved her.

viii.

When Stacker learned about what had happened, Herc supposed he deserved the black eye. His companion was furious, for Herc jeopardizing their mission. The others stood around while they squared off, staring each other down in their tiny camp.

“She has information,” he said, trying to defend himself.

“So you slept with her for that?” his face was dead, unbelieving.

Herc’s lip curled. “I love her.”

“She’s _Chau’s._ Did it not occur to you that it was his men that could have killed your father?”

“It has. And I’ll watch him bleed. But she does have information. We can’t deny that.”

“We can’t,” he said, “but you’re a fool, Hercules Hansen, and you may have killed us all.”

ix.

A day came where Angela knew she could go to Chau no longer. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t honest anymore. Chau came to her when she was alone, his arms went around her, and she had to endure thoughts of Herc while his breath was hot on her neck, rocking against her. Telling her how much he couldn’t wait for their wedding night.

He cared nothing for her, she knew. She’d known all along, but since finding Herc…

She had fled in tears after he’d departed for a meeting with her father, that fire opal burning like a brand on her hand. She’d gone all the way to her and Herc’s cave, crying bitterly when she’d found him waiting for her.

What future could they have? If she forsook the ring she was a traitor to her father’s home. If she accepted her duty, she’d never have Herc again. And at seventeen love was always absolutes. So she’d thrown herself into his lap, unable to truly verbalize what she was thinking.

She hadn’t known she was being tailed, so distraught she was. So when she had calmed down enough to kiss Herc, to make him promise to never let her go in broken words, they had been watched. Watched as she lifted her skirt and settled upon him in desperate love-making.

x.

It was the footprints outside the cave that made Herc act. They had no time, not if they’d been caught. He already knew Hannibal Chau’s wrath would be swift enough, if the man was anything like he was sure of. He’d seen the quiet ragings in his eyes, and Bruce and Trevin, who tailed him sometimes, had reported bursts of temper, acting out with his knife on his underlings.

He took Angela to their camp knowing they had no time there for anything approaching respite. They packed, and Angela’s face paled when she watched them load guns onto their hips.

“This is your rite,” Herc reminded them, as they saddled horses. “There will be no besting of Richard. There’s only this or marching West.”

“Eternally West, maybe,” said Bruce, looking at Scott’s worried face.

Herc nodded. There was always the chance that they didn’t all get to march home.

Angela came with them as they made their way like shadows over rough land towards the disused Southridge Mine after they’d found a safe place for the horses. They crossed the road only once, and it was curious to see. It had rained a few days hence and despite the fact that all accounts of townsfolk insisted Southridge was no longer in use there were deep wheel tracks left over in the still-drying mud.

“Summat’s been this way,” said Trevin, leaning over them. “A day ago, maybe.”

Scott spotted the lights coming first, and shouted for them to evacuate the road. They had disappeared in the rocks beneath a crag. Herc’s arm was around Angela as they all breathed close in sync and watched as a crew with oxen and cart marched past. Herc could see all of the men there were Chau’s. Even the man who put them up, Garreth Abarca.

“Chau’s worried,” said Stacker to Herc.

“And angry.”

After carefully picking their way over the countryside they all came upon a vantage point. The crew they’d seen was milling about a small building near the mouth of the mine, offloading something. Herc wagered it was gun powder.

“We ought to see what’s in the mine,” said Herc. “Something they don’t want the public to see.”

“They might not care,” said Angela.

Stacker looked at her before he nodded. “I give them a day before they ask us to leave or move upon us, Herc.”

“Then let’s make our move now,” he said. “Angela, you stay-”

“Do not tell me to stay, Hercules,” she said, getting up. Her hand moved over her ring finger, pulling the engagement ring free. “This is my town, and if we destroy whatever it is they do, then I’m as dead to this place as you are.”

He smiled at her, standing with her. “Very well.”

There were still lights at the mine, and Herc figured they were permanent. Angela insisted that they always shone, night or day, at all the mines as LaMerk machinery moved over and over until it died.

The tipple itself was silent, and they made their way under its heavy wooden beams, approaching the mouth of the mine itself. A conveyer system was still, rusted and rotten from disuse, pieces scattered on the valley floor. To their right the oxen pawed the ground, as the men went into the mine.

They crouched, not far from a control room. The lights shone from there, and a single large one illuminated the mouth of the mine shaft. Anyone crossing towards it would be light up like a beacon.

Movement at the control room made Herc’s hands shift to his hips. For the first time since their journey began, all boys bore their guns. This was to be their test of manhood. Find out who killed Donovan Hansen, and stop whatever needed be stopped, come whatever may.

A man stepped from inside, walking across the perimeter. Herc’s heart nearly stopped, because the man was carrying a rifle. A real, true rifle, and he wondered where and how he’d gotten it. Much of the olden guns were long since destroyed, and only the gunslingers carried _guns._

“I need you all to understand,” said Herc, “we face more than the West tonight.” He looked at Scott, at his brother’s earnest young face, which was a mask of worry.

“I know,” he said, “but it’s for dad, right?”

Herc nodded, reaching out to run his hand over Scott’s hair. “It is.”

Stacker cleared his throat quietly. “We destroy the mine, and those in it. Expose them for what they are to the Governor.”

“It will do no good to go to my father,” said Angela faintly. “That’s one of his men.”

“The whole damn town is guilty then,” said Herc. “We stop this now, and we ride home. Tonight. And send a militia.”

“Agreed,” said Stacker. “Everyone?”

They all nodded.

Together they all crept to the small cabin filled with golden light. Herc killed the only guard with his knife, tossing the body aside to search the place. It was a control room for the mine, the machines mostly silent or pathetically whining without tasks to do. It, like the mine, felt like a place of death, of a world moved on. A quick scouring revealed requests scribed on rare paper from Terth for more munitions. Gunpowder, for canons. Things to move themselves from Gilead.

“We collapse it,” said Stacker, finding a few crates of old dynamite, the glycerine starting to leak through the casing. It was unstable, dangerous, but all they had.

“We could drive them in. Of the two of you, who’s the steadier hand?” asked Herc, looking at the twins. “Three of us can drive them in, the other two can set the explosives.”

“I’ve a steadier hand,” said Trevin, “I’ll do the setting.”

“And you can show Scott?”

“I can.”

“Then we act. Angela, stay back out of range of the guns. Don’t argue. I want you safe.”

The six of them left the control room with the boxes of dynamite.

The guard was killed easily, with a throw of a knife. Herc gave the rifle to Angela and bid her flee to where they had entered the yard and to wait.

There was a shout from the mouth of the canyon and Herc’s hands filled with thunder as he drew and fired guns at an enemy for the first time. His shots were true as he repeated the creed in his head, and a moment later Stacker was firing with Bruce as Trevin and Scott cut a wide arc around to the mouth of the mine, placing their crates, using flint and tinder to light.

There was no saying how far the blast would go, as they retreated, shooting into the mouth of the cave.

When Herc figured they were far enough and sufficiently covered he roared instructions to fire on the crates. All their guns blazed, and while they didn’t know whose bullet it was, the explosion was deafening. With a crack the side of the mountain came down, trapping all those inside, as the Gunslingers ducked to avoid flying pieces of rock.

Explosion still ringing in their ears, the others fled with ideas of joining the militia that would return to Veritas. Herc, with Angela’s body pressed against his back, had ideas only of a family.

xi.

It was on the way out of town that they ran into Chau, fresh from a head hunt for the boys. He demanded Angela, but Herc, with all the anger inside of him for his father, for the woman behind him, in his heart he raised his gun and fired as the others raised and aimed true.

Hannibal Chau had spun, blood flying from his face. Herc had only wished he’d done a more thorough job, before they’d continued, riding like madmen on the road home.

xii.

Herc married Angela the following spring. He remained with the gunslingers until he was eighteen, when Angela was pregnant with their child. He didn’t leave because of her, but because his brother was killed in a skirmish with other gunslingers. Their family was shamed by Scott’s fall to drugs and decadence, his murder of his fellows. Herc left with his and his brothers guns, going west towards Mid-World.

She gave birth that summer to a small boy with red hair and his mother’s eyes, and they lived in peace until the bank had been robbed. Eyewitnesses claimed that the lone assailant was a redhaired man, large, like the mysterious Herc Hansen on the edge of town.

He was arrested in front of Charles, now two years of age, and Angela. Clapped in irons, he’d looked up into Chau’s scarred eye as his wife screamed and son cried. Men were entering his home, their sanctum.

“Bought off by you, then?” he’d said savagely, before someone had taken a baton and hit him across the face.

Lying, gagging in his own blood, Herc had heard Chau’s words against his ears. “You’ve taken everything from me. So now I take yours.”

“Leave her out of it,” he’d said, “leave them both.” The words where wheezing, blood flecked on his lips.

“I intend to leave them,” said Chau. “But it’s the _where_ that will hurt you. I could have had you framed for murder, but I want you to get out. I want you to come back to a burned out husk of a home, and the knowledge that your baby is dead on the hard pan.”

The baton cracked against Herc’s head again and he saw no more until he woke up in custody, and then in jail on trial in Gilead, his testimony on deaf ears. The only one who seemed to care was Stacker and Luna Pentecost.

“Find them,” he begged, his last request before iron bars had cut him away from the world.

xiii.

The afternoon was coming on when Herc finally finished. His words had gone into great length and detail on many things, and Chuck’s head was full of a world beyond his small one. He sat watching his father stare up at the sky, his own hurts throbbing. Remembering flashes of memory he had from when he was a boy. A dead woman, the hot sun, the hardpan. Sasha.

He had nothing to say, really.

“Everything else is unknown to me.”

Chuck shrugged. “From what everyone supposed, my mother had gone mad and ran with me into the desert. I was found later wandering and mostly dead and sunburned. Since they were heading to Breach, the horsemen took me there. I was taken in by Sasha.”

“When did Pentecost find ye?”

“I was three. I don’t remember, but he told me once. Sasha was better established so it was agreed I stayed with her. He wasn’t very old, him and his sister, and they were strangers asking for a random orphan of the wrong coloured skin. He tried his best to watch me though, when Sasha allowed it.”

Herc shook his head, like something galled him. “When did Mako appear?”

“She was another orphan, from a village near the sea. Some refugees came our way, and he offered to take her in when he heard who had killed her family. Stacker was already sheriff.”

This much Herc knew from Mako, though not much more. He’d have to quiz her more on her own origins, on Onibaba, the woman who had killed her family and now reportedly worked for Chau.

“I’m still riled at the man for not taking you and raising you. I’d have raised his.” He savagely stabbed his stick into the fire, watching the ashes pop with hidden sparks. “That’s neither here nor there. You’re needed in town?”

Chuck nodded. He had his bar to keep, before someone rioted. At least Jazmine would open that day, and probably get Yancy or Raleigh Becket to help until he returned.

“You’ll give a message to Pentecost to meet here in a few days. It’s time we all had a palaver to decide what to do.”

 


End file.
